Readers Write: Was This My Midlife Crisis?

Despite having ticked off most middle-aged milestones – I have built businesses, humans, a marriage, a house (hardest by far) – it was like the chronological needle got stuck, spinning indefinitely at my 31year old RPM. But then came the pandemic. And with the global crisis finally came my own midlife version, writes Claire Taaffe…

It was Conall that finally tipped me. I didn’t fancy him. I mean, I wanted to. Even tried to muster up a tiny flicker as I listened to my friends’ weekly lust logs. I could see his beauty: his centurion GAA legs, a wingspan you could cling onto for dear life. I totally got how you’d be torn between wanting to shake him or shag him. But to be honest, he mostly made me feel what my seven-year-old calls “happy-sad”. Fondly nostalgic for all the mumbling Conalls I had pined for. Wistful for my younger insecure self who thought it was her job to put words in their mouths, even if they were never the ones I wanted them to say. But attraction? All I could think I am literally old enough to be his mother until Google told me the actress playing her was obviously younger than me. Meanwhile, I couldn’t ignore a growing fondness for the lovely Professor Luke O’Neill. Yep, him. No-one was more surprised than I was. But. His twinkly eyes. Life-saving science brain. Jesus, what was happening to me?

The author Malcolm Gladwell describes, in the book of the same name, the Tipping Point as "the moment of critical mass, the threshold, the boiling point". It would appear that in the middle of a global pandemic, I had gone off the boil and crossed over to the Middle Ages.

Conall/Luke-gate was just the final nail in my middle-aged coffin, the final spark that lit an inevitable long-brewing storm. Little clouds had been there for years: the furious scanning for seats in pubs; The gleeful hopping into bed early with a new book. The tutting at teenage boys on bikes. There was a groundswell of bigger stuff too: that constant feeling you were always letting someone down no matter how fast you juggled. Mortgages that meant you chose your head over your heart. Jobs where you were now the one in charge with supposedly all the answers. Bereavements that left you breathless and broken wondering what the hell the point of it all was. Turns out all of these, unsurprisingly now that I see them written down, age you.

So much is written of the male mid-life crisis. And while I can appreciate it’s an easy stereotype (although God, the lycra- in- all- the- wrong- places cycling lark makes them literal sitting ducks) it still seems more ridiculous than women’s. What the female equivalent looks like seems to receive far less airing, which if you think about it makes no sense as we have both a physical and existential change to go through. Looking at the woman around me, it seems this equatorial line manifests as something deeper and fundamental.

Perhaps it’s yet another gender inequality that as the babies and now domestic load carriers, we have way too much cop-on or are just too knackered to be fussed by anything with an engine or even hot younger men. Having juggled our ways through careers, children, relationships, we arrive at the halfway point mentally frazzled and increasingly invisible; wondering if baby botox, ballet barre, or better yet; wine, could be the answer to the gnawing feeling in the pit of your stomach that you are not perhaps living your best life.

This kaleidoscope of life had kept me spinning until suddenly the world stopped turning. With that, the whirlwind stopped dead, and spat me back out. Lockdown life bubbled up plenty. Like everyone, there was the initial anxiety: near-constant edginess, jolting upright in bed at 4 am spooked by noises only you could hear. The guilt of knowing so many had bigger real problems where all I had to do was stay home and mind my kids, created such a negative inner monologue that I had to try and switch off the voices in my head as much as the constant newswires.

But slowly, because life always goes on, the nothingness of the world’s collective pause created a vacuum in which I could let life’s dust settle and see things with no blinkers on (apart from the Luke thing maybe).

It started with trivial things: I realised pretty quickly that I couldn’t anymore, shop away my mood. Basket after basket, I filled with Lululemon leggings (notions), miracle retinol (ambitious) and wireless bras (dangerous), with most of them destined to remain there forever in some sort of pandemic retail purgatory.

I “shopped” then “kondoed” my wardrobe like everyone else, wondering, then despairing at, this person with rails and rails of barely worn floaty summer dresses, jeans in three different sizes and the same blazer from Zara in four different colours. Four?

It wasn’t even the fact I had no-where to go. Or the realisation that shopping was perhaps a very expensive hobby. More that my vast wardrobe didn’t reflect who I was anymore or maybe ever. I realised that I was still shopping for someone with a life I haven’t lived in years. My clothes, the ones I actually wear most days (and I don’t mean pandemic days as all sartorial bets have been off), fit on one rail alone. They are the ones that fit my shape, as I now know or more importantly accept what works, they are usually the ones that I have spent a bit of money on and finally, God I can’t believe I’m writing this, the ones that wash well.
Middle-aged, see!

Lockdown made me rethink, then rewire my relationship with exercising. With my gym closed, and no childcare, no-one was more surprised than me that I still found and made the time to do something worky-outy most days. It became clear that the days I squeezed in some random zoom class or a lunchtime run, I was calmer and happier. No amount of 5k shuffles was going to make a dent into the daily wine and banana bread habit, however, but finally, I didn’t give a hoot. I was exercising for my sanity, not my jeans size.

I got to take a long hard look at myself – literally. I rediscovered my natural hair shade (still blah brown) and the novelty rather than the routine of wearing make-up. I have worn “a full face” twice since March (I still wear lipstick most days, I’m not a total animal). Both times, my toddler sat puzzled and unsure, retracing my entire face with his fingers which made me happy and sad again. Having spent months living in my bare face, I think I’ll be far less likely to try and scribble it over every single day on autopilot.

It’s weird how, in your forties, the words “for her age” get added to “she looks great”.

Happily, though, I think this coincides with the realisation that someone’s appearance, including your own, is rarely the most interesting thing about them. And while I’m so looking forward to lashing on all of the make-up for my first night out, while shouting “Momma’s still got it babies” and then legging it, Jesus it’s liberating not to place so much value on how I look.

The hardest bit of all though, has been staring down the barrel of who I am as a parent. Until earlier this year, I had worked full-time and full-on throughout my three kids’ entire lives. I supposed this would be precious bonus family time but by April I was struggling to keep my head above water. There were days all four of us cried before lunchtime. Moments where I sent unhinged texts to my husband begging him to sneak out of his attic cell to grant me five minutes alone. At times it felt like I was trapped in some sort of maternity leave time-warp, just without the boobs.

I can see now with a small bit of road since peak lockdown, some of this was me attempting the impossible. I forgot how mindless long days with kids can be, even without a pandemic, and that just because it’s rewarding, doesn’t mean you are always enjoying yourself. And that’s it totally grand to admit that working away from my kids for some of the time probably makes me a better mum that the stay at home shouty housewife version.

But I also saw some parts I wasn’t so proud of. How it was unfair of me to be ratty with my six-year-old’s non-stop questions because I was WhatsApp’ing my friends. That it was perhaps ironic for me to give out about toddler tantrums then throw my own wobblers when I felt nobody listened to me.

For the first time in my life, I couldn’t schedule away my kids or even myself, I had to sit with myself, warts, wine and all and re-evaluate what type of mum, no, person, I wanted to be and how reality was stacking up against that.

This double whammy pandemic / midlife crisis has challenged me to come up with a better way of making it “all” work. I didn’t need a midlife crisis to know that having it all is bullshit: “All” is way too much for any one person. Like a bad dessert trolley, when you pile a bit of everything onto your plate, it just completely stuffs you up.

I think along the way, I got so busy that I mindlessly copied and pasted the bog-standard society template of what adult success was but then forgot, with the benefit of experience and privilege of choice, to adapt this for me.

I’m proud of the career I’ve worked hard to build, and I really love what I do but that doesn’t mean I can answer the question of how I have spent so many years putting it at the heart of my life when my kids, family, lovely friends are the centre of my heart.

I can’t un-see how my kids have revelled in both of us being so physically present in their every day. I will no longer take for granted how we are – for only a few more years - their favourite place to be. The raw truth of all of this literally staring back at me in recent months has caused an irreparable fault line and I know, whatever happens, we can’t go back to before.

What ‘next’ looks like, to be honest, I haven’t got a clue. And that’s the most liberating thing of all. Midlife and Covid-19 have both reminded me that everyone is winging it. We are all in the proverbial gutter so we may as well try and search for stars. A crisis can be a time of intense danger. But it can also signal a pivotal time. This has been both. So thank you Conall/Luke - for giving me the space to have my own midlife crisis, I’m oddly grateful.
Ah the lockdown. I feel happy-sad about it already.

Claire Taaffe, July 2020.

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