Agony Aunt (fiction)

Dear Agony Aunt,

Far too many times in life, I have settled for second best. If I were to evaluate my life and the feelings and thoughts about myself that I have running through the span of 24 hours, I’d say that I have a very poor ego, zero enthusiasm to give life its best shot, little or no motivation to actually go for what makes me happy, and almost no objectives in life.

This makes me live my life as if I were just meandering through my existence day after day, merely waiting for the right time to come for the bus of life to meet its bus stop. Sad isn’t it? But it’s true, and I’ve found this to be true ever since I hit the big three o.

Being thirty and minus a life long partner has been lingering on my heart for more than just a couple of years, and I feel like I have lost the zest for living because I haven’t really achieved what I should have, which is what I wanted for myself from the time I was a little kid. Having had those plans washed away by the waves of time, I feel that there’s no turning back now. I have to live and keep going on, but I’m inflicting a self-punishment in the living by looking down at myself in disdain.

I never realized that this was the way I’ve been living my life, till I stumbled upon something that I thought would make me happy. The moment I inched my way into giving it voice, I found a release and I saw myself again and the way I used to be before this big change came about, post 30. I was a very happy person, a very pretty person and I was so excited about life and the beautiful person that I was that I could never give up till something was achieved, merely because I liked myself so much.

But now my hair is thinning, its colour graying. I’m no longer in my adventurous twenties and the frightening part is that those days will never come back again. I’m sometimes way too shy for my liking and the reason for that timidity is the fact that I like myself so little that I sort of consider myself a throw-off, salvaged from the bin and kept on a table to just keep growing only because I have to! I see peers happily married with kids and homes and it makes me see myself as a disaster – somewhat a failure, because there’s absolutely no guarantee that I will find a lifetime partner. I mean what are the odds? I don’t want to be a cradle snatcher and go out with someone 10 years my junior or something, nor do I want to find myself having big bellied, ageing guys queuing as prospective partners.

I guess I've hit my midlife crisis way before the middle. And it’s depressing.

Love,

Thirty Plus