Diary of a Mid-Life Crisis Part 2

Anniki Sommerville - 24 Dec 17

Some say a sign that you’re having a breakdown is when you stop sleeping properly. Or get heart palpitations for no reason. Or overreact to something quite minor. The problem is, all these things were quite commonplace in my life, and had been for some time. From the outside things looked okay. I had a beautiful child and a great husband (okay our relationship was hard but that’s long-term relationships, they’re no walk in the park). I also had a job which paid well. I ate a nice lunch most days. I laughed once a week – sometimes these laughs were tinged with hysteria, but that was okay. I cried often but thought this was possibly related to tiredness or the peri-menopause (yet I was too scared to actually do any research into this as once I did, I would have to admit it was happening right?)

Once Bella reached three years old, I could feel life was getting easier. Nevertheless, it was as if the fug of the earlier, chaotic days was lifting to reveal a vast empty terrain. With babies, it’s easy to get lost in the sleeplessness, feeding, panic, angst and then discover that there isn’t much else going on once the mess has cleared. Often I’d awaken in the middle of the night to a booming noise in my ears. The noise of my heart ready to explode. Then the thoughts would start up.

Does Bella’s nursery teacher hate me?

Have I filed the right version of the loo roll presentation for Friday morning?

Why hasn’t the client replied to my last email?

Where have all my tights disappeared to?

Why do I shout so much at Bella?

What is that lump on the back of the cat’s head?

Why am I eating so many potatoes these past few days?

And how does everyone else get through each day without giving up?

Then, the only thing I could do to quiet my brain was to watch a couple of episodes of –  ‘Keeping Up With The Kardashians.’ These beautiful yet strangely cold women lived in a universe where life looked busy yet relatively easy (and also seemed devoid of emotion –each  face rendered immobile by Botox). I am sure someone at Pineapple would offer up a cultural context as to why this reality TV soothed me but I’ll just say that after watching an hour, I could usually go back to bed again.

That particular Monday morning, I arrived at the office, which was eight floors up in a lifeless, grey, glass building, and sat down at the nearest free desk. There was a lot of bustle already and it was obvious that some had been in for some time. The ‘Pineapple Lab’ had changed since I’d started back in the early noughties. I now had no idea who most of the people were. It had been a company of ten, and now employed over a hundred in London alone. I worked three days a week and whilst I’d like to tell you it worked just fine for me, it didn’t. I had the constant feeling that I hadn’t got a clue what was going on. There were new initiatives launched every two weeks. There was Monday Power Lunch (where an older person had to sit with a younger person and be told what was what). Wednesday Round-The-World Breakfast (self-explanatory-  the onus being to talk to one another and share our mutual passions for eating diverse food types). Friday Fun Sessions – possibly the worst of the initiatives,  as we were made to stay an hour longer and drink beer together, when we (I) really wanted to get home after a long, day spent collaborating, team-building and being generally enthusiastic. It takes more than a trolley laden with beer to shake off a week’s resentments and bitter rivalries.

These initiatives combined with the heavy workload made life exhausting. You were either answering emails or being forced to bond with colleagues, which afforded very little time to sit in the toilet crying (though I managed this at least once a week anyway).

 Still (it seemed), the company was doing well. They were hiring more people each week (all of them seemed unfeasibly young and fresh). These new hires just contributed to the feeling that I was no longer at the cut and thrust of the market research world. There were only a few of us left now, and the three or four favoured ones had their own offices with proper heating, so you only spotted their grey hair flouncing past atop their haggard faces when they walked to the shared toilets. The thing is marketing is all about youth. Our job was to help clients sell stuff. We did this chiefly by talking to people in group situations and showing them bad ideas. Not all of these ideas were bad but the majority were. In my youth, I’d thought I was helping bring good things to the wider population but when I reflected more deeply, it wasn’t of course true.

Anniki Sommerville

I'm Super Editor here at SelfishMother.com and love reading all your fantastic posts and mulling over all the complexities of modern parenting. We have a fantastic and supportive community of writers here and I've learnt just how transformative and therapeutic writing can me. If you've had a bad day then write about it. If you've had a good day- do the same! You'll feel better just airing your thoughts and realising that no one has a master plan. I'm Mum to a daughter who's 3 and my passions are writing, reading and doing yoga (I love saying that but to be honest I'm no yogi).

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