Turning 40

I turned 40 this week.

Four decades. I remember there was a time I thought I'd grow up to "die alone as a hermit in the woods." I remember thinking maybe working as a programmer for Microsoft would be interesting. There was a time I thought I might become a marine biologist, specifically an ichthyologist, and study sharks. Later on I even flirted with the notion of working to become a successful author.

Today I'm not working for Microsoft. I don't live in the woods, although the town I reside in is rapidly withering economically and some might argue our tiny dot on the map is not far removed from being woodland. I don't even own diving equipment and am nowhere near the ocean (although we do live on a river that ends in the ocean, if you want to travel a few hundred miles.) The closest I've come to becoming an author was finishing and editing exactly one manuscript.

I'm pretty sure, at this point, that I have depression issues. I know it's more common today for people to talk about depression. For some people it is dismissed as an excuse of the week, or they brush it off as a "feeling blue" thing that you can exercise away or "just cheer up" to move past; "Just cheer up!" they say, totally ignoring that clinical depression is a thing.

While this little shadow has always been lingering to some degree in the back of my mind, I've had some things really raise that shadow higher in prominence in the past few years. It would take chapters of a book to cover details, but the highlight reel would include attempts by my wife's employer to eliminate her from her job using what could be (in my view, as this is my opinion) charitably be labeled slanderous accusations. That was a year-long ordeal that took a huge emotional and financial toll on the family.

After that drawn out mess, things finally felt like they were turning around. There was a light at the end of the tunnel! Unfortunately, it was a train's headlamp.

The employer I had come to rely on for emotional and financial support decided to terminate my contract, which is a nice way of saying I was sent home with a box of my belongings. Now it was my turn to plunge into a world of uncertainty, doubt, and the five stages of grief. I was blindsided and even the act of getting out of bed felt like fighting a dark shroud squeezing the life out of me.

Worse yet, if you feel like taking a moral stance and voicing support for teachers in the never ending fight over contracts, even if your family has been working in public education for decades, even if you do this by pointing out actual evidence straight from the faces of the people you feel are in the wrong, you might want to think twice if this takes place in a town that is turning into the economic equivalent of a mummy and you might have to return and look for a job. I made some statements that gained some traction among certain circles here; at the time I felt secure in the idea that my employment was secure in the land of gummy bears and unicorns. The reversal of fortune played right into the hands of depression's self doubt and uncertainty, whispering that "they" are laughing at my incompetence as I searched for job openings in a town propped up by Wal-Mart, McDonalds, a hospital system and the public education system whose administration and board are not pleased with you for writing something that was popular for a couple days among their staff.

I also experienced firsthand the silence from most of the people I had taken for granted as friends and associates from what I eventually came to regard as my "previous life."

These were two major events. I was already dealing with issues and stresses that many others have to deal with in life. These two major events just fanned the depression flames.

Now we have a national problem; we became a Trumpster fire nation. Every day came a new display of ignorance and people taking pride in how terrible they can be. I don't feel that there's much to act as a counterbalance against the papercuts of negativity he and his followers display.

It's been a long, stressful, painful period of time.

It's also been nearly a year since I started my new job, which gave me some sense of self worth again. Slowly it helped build up some sense of validation that I'm not worthless. I'm not sure if that makes sense or if I'm laying another misplaced sense of power into the hands of something in which I shouldn't emotionally invest. But for now it's there and helping me.

My family has been supportive during this emotional roller coaster, or tried to be. I don't think I quite acknowledge the good they do as much as I focus on negative things that families deal with. That's a side effect of both depression and Aspergian brain wiring, I think. Given the reflection hitting four decades of sentience has triggered, I think I need to continue trying to improve on that behavior.

All of these things have combined into a hazy mire that congealed into a cloud around me, affecting my worldview and keeping me in a perpetual weariness. I thought my birthday, despite being a magic number (I love the number 4, and 10 is a binary number as well as the number of digits on my hands and the number of digits on my feet, and is even, and possesses several other attributes that lend an irrational appreciation in my mind), would be yet another quiet passage marked by some cards and well wishes and soon forgotten. It was even on a Wednesday, my least favorite day for events to occur.

Usually the big booster in looking forward to my birthday is that it is preceded by Halloween. I love the idea of Halloween; the image of trick or treat, costume parties, awesome DIY costumes, parades, and horror movies are so much fun for me. But this year was different; the Friday before my birthday brought an announcement that indictments were coming against Trumpster acquaintances! After an anticipation-filled weekend, Monday had people brought in to testify, and we discovered one of his campaign associates had already pled guilty to lying to police and was cooperating with investigators!

We went out for dinner on my birthday with my in-laws and parents. One of the TV's played MSNBC's coverage of Trump's Russian connections and the mounting investigations. I was giddy.

My birthday was also marked by the Daily Show having an interview with Hillary Clinton. I don't know why that made me happy...I guess because she's the symbol of everything "I told you so" during the Presidential election.

These were things that worked to fight the shroud of depression whispering in my ear, and were totally counter to the idea that my 40th birthday would be quiet. These were things that were happy events for me.

There were other, not so happy events that marked the birthday-time. Unexpected shocks like the guy who rented a truck and ran over bike riders in downtown Manhattan. Because he wasn't white, it was labeled as an act of terrorism, unlike the recent Vegas shooting of around 600 people by a white guy where the fallout is basically several people going bankrupt from medical bills and modifications the shooter made to his guns staying perfectly legal and Congress clutching pearls at the idea that nothing can prevent these things from happening.

Yet another shocking event involved layoffs at a previous employer. I discovered it as oddly worded and vague tweets began floating along my Twitter timeline; today there was a Techcrunch article giving conflicting details of what had happened. In the end I could only confirm that a relatively large number of people were let go, some of whom I knew and had worked with so it wasn't just trimming the newest of hires. In keeping with the "Me me me!" theme, this news caused me to revisit all the thoughts of despair and hopelessness that I felt as my wife drove me home from the apartment after I was told my time there had ended. I empathized with what must be a swirl of confusion and fear that these people now feel. I also watched as people who escaped the cutting block echoed their support for one another and words of sadness to their departed colleagues. Selfishly I felt like the bandage was ripped off an old wound.

I turned 40 this week.

Nothing I thought was going to happen as a teen happened. Getting older shifted into a pattern where almost every day blended into the next; mostly unremarkable, smeared with a veneer of depression and frustration, life is mostly a comfortable pattern of routine. I expected it to be yet another average day, but this birthday was marked with some surprises. Some good. Some bad. But one thing this birthday wasn't is uneventful.