Screeching through a midlife crisis

I’m opening this post with Faith No More’s 90’s hit on a loop around my head…which is kind of apt considering my mid life crisis is undeniably music oriented.

Of course, I’ve had to ask myself whether or not midlife crises are an actual thing. Are they real, or are they simply a way to mark a point in time where we do certain things that have become stereotypical of middle age.

But I haven’t bought a new sports car, had an affair or packed in life and travelled around the world. Saying that, I reckon I’m in a pretty good position to say that, yes, a midlife crisis is, in fact, an actual real thing. And I think I’ve been bouncing around in mine since the start of lockdown - when I first called my therapist up after years of not seeing her.

She asked me what the problem was - no doubt gearing up for another conversation about lockdown isolation or health anxiety. But instead I told her I was over-excitable and yearning for youth. I was angry with the young me for being so shy and not enjoying herself as much when she could. For fading into the background. I said that something wasn’t quite right, I was a bit out of balance and that it often felt great, often felt awful, but rarely felt so-so.

Three years later and I’m still having to manage my excitability and boost my flat days with multiple trips to the Hoppings fair, jumping up and down at gigs and running almost daily with 90s tunes blasting my ear drums. In fact, I find I’m going running now because I just want to be in that zone - because I enjoy it. The getting fit part of my motivation has become almost secondary.

See above for my 90s Spotify playlist :-)

It’s a restlessness, you see. A feeling that anything is possible and a renewed love of myself - with a bit of ‘my body is my temple’ thinking thrown in on weekdays, before intoxicating it all with booze and cigarettes on a weekend and hating myself for behaving like a petulant child (yes, I was the one stamping my feet and complaining to my sister and my mate that it was too early to leave Welly Club the other Saturday night because I wanted to dance some more).

Music is perhaps the most intense element of my midlife crisis. Before lockdown, in fact looking back to 2018, I found myself listening to so much 90s stuff on Spotify that I was in the top 0.1% of Senseless Things fans. The music made me feel great - but it also made me ache for youth. The idea that nothing is mapped out and you’ve got a long, long way to go - a road to somewhere stretching out ahead of you.

I don’t know about you, but for me, I wonder if a midlife crisis is very much a ‘grass is greener’ vibe? I mean, if I’m honest, as much as I saw a few gigs and went clubbing til all hours as a teen, I wasn’t a happy bunny. Not at all. I was consumed with anxiety, a desperate lack of self confidence and extreme social awkwardness.

So maybe the midlife crisis is kind of like a crossroads…you’re waiting to step over some kind of imaginary line and feeling confused because you want to go back but not to how it was - and you don’t want to lose the person you’ve become and the happiness you’ve created. Perhaps a midlife crisis is like a plane coming out of the sky - it’s heading through the change in atmosphere and hitting clouds and turbulence. Perhaps, in a few weeks, or months, I’ll be slipping into middle age smoothly without a bump or a doubt, and maybe that’s what I need to be heading for.

Either way, my 90s playlists are going to come with me. And I can’t see myself falling back out of love with live music, either. But maybe that’s actually just a normal part of mid-life rather than some kind of crisis where I try to re-claim my youth? Doing what I want to do, not caring how I look when I jump up and down on the spot and being able to be in the moment rather than worrying about everything else that adolescence and youthful hormones made you worry about.

Whenever you’re on a long haul flight, a bit of turbulence can feel welcome. It shakes things up and stops you feeling so bored. But too much - well, that can leave you with a banging head and hangxiety levels that are wayyyyy higher on the Richter scale at 45 because something’s telling you to grow up.

I’m contradicting myself now, I know. Who says I should grow up. But that’s because I’m bang in the middle of the turbulence…

I guess, just like if you were on a plane, moments of turbulence require you to strap yourself in and take note of what’s going on around you. After all, you don’t want to be over-excitedly making the bumps worse. It’s about surfing the waves as best you can and enjoying them - with a bit of insight.

I’m still going to jump up and down at that Charlatans gig in November though. That’s non negotiable. I’ll probably just make sure I’m home in time to swerve the hangover and enjoy a cosy breakfast of tea and toast under my duvet the next morning…

If you’re up for re-living your youth without directly enduring the bumps, you might want to check out my two 90s books, The Twenty Seven Club and Parklife.

Thanks for reading,

Lucy x