Empty Nest

Have you ever stood under a sky full of stars and wondered at your insignificance? In my case, looking up at the sky is always a revelation, a reality check. The thing about life is that it is so uncertain, yet here we are with all our silly plans, postponing our happiness for tomorrow. Lately, I have been going through this malaise called "mid-life crisis". It is more common than you would think. It is when you reach half way through your life span and look back and wonder what you have done with your life.. It is a realization that maybe all is not lost, and life could still be different. It is the urgency of time ticking by  and a sense of loss.  When I meet young adults, just starting their life, there is a tinge of despair, a feeling of nostalgia for time gone by. The realization that I  have passed that stage, that all that is in the past, and even if I wanted to, I could not rewind the clock back, leaves you with despair. I understand a decade from now, I would be looking at the current phase with longing too.

Once you are in your mid -twenties, you invest in your career and if you are lucky a happy family. What no one ever tells you is that along with being rewarding, building a family is all consuming too, as it should rightly be so. The years from when your kids are born, till the time, they are sort-of independent, flies away at times in a haze. I am not a sentimentalist, I rarely look back at old photos,but the truth is dawning on me that at present I am more dependent on my kids for my emotional needs than they are on me.  They are starting to step out in the world and will need me time and again, I know that because I am fortunate enough to still lean in to my parents. But for now my role is to lurk in the shadows , be the safety net while they learn to trapeze through life.

I would be lying if I said that adapting to this  pre-empty nest  stage is easy I had happily lost myself in this journey of being a responsible adult. I am in the process of rediscovering myself, trying to fill in the vacuum. I have waited long for this phase, to reclaim my time as an individual, yet I feel despair, with my role as nurturer, disciplinarian, and at times maid, being replaced by a friend that lurks in the background. I am lost for now, trying to reinvent a life- to create a life beyond kids, to adapt to a new phase in life.