Well it’s Temptation Tuesday and this one is going to be a shit show! Yesterday I read a very long, informative, and depressing article on Oprah.com titled “The New Midlife Crisis…Why (and How) It’s Hitting Gen X Women” by Ada Calhoun. Please do not read this article without having an entire bottle of wine at hand! It was so truthful and yet so fucking depressing! Many of my friends did not even make it to the end of the article! Of course, I…without wine nor a Xanax, boldly read every last word! The premise is that Gen X women (myself included) are the forgotten middle children! We are more educated than our mothers, more exhausted (whether we have children or not), are more likely to end up alone because our parents are more likely to be divorced than any other group so we don’t have a blueprint to keep our relationships together and thus, we are fucking jaded (? tell me something I didn’t know), there are less of us than the generations above us and below us…thus we have a greater chance of being older parents while caring for our own aging parents, we start to get “perry” or premenopausal symptoms almost a decade earlier than our mothers, and we feel defeated because we worked our asses off but because of two recessions, we most likely have had long periods of unemployment, are still living paycheck to paycheck, and only to find out more recessions are most likely on their way as we start to age out of the youthful employee category! So to sum up my sum of Ada’s article…we Gen X women are fucked!!! It’s not like I didn’t feel what Ada was saying way before I read this article (I think my Crisis started at age 29…when unemployment ravaged my soul and my self esteem) but to see it all in bold print…I wanted to throw the fuck up! I did everything “right.” Did not become a teenage mom, didn’t choose marriage over myself, closed shop on my womb, have multiple degrees, and dove into a career that has not been rewarding…to my pockets nor my soul. I’m a consultant so I really don’t have a retirement plan. Fucked. Fucked. Fucked. Only good news in Ada’s article is that it didn’t matter whether I chose a husband or not…most of us Gen X women are gonna die alone anyways! ?? We out live men and most may leave us before they drop dead! ?Ain’t that a bitch…that that’s the only silver lining I saw in the article! And why isn’t the female Midlife Crisis not spoken about more?! Because society focuses on the men’s! ??According to Ada, women tend to start going through their midlife crisis way before men so by the time men start with their antics…we have adjusted! And guess what that gets some of us? Our older mates now want younger women and the life we created with them ain’t enough! ? Jesus be a fence! Like why do we Gen X women even try?! It didn’t matter whether I got pregnant at 15 or 50…I was going to be fucked anyways! Struggling. Exhausted. Feeling like a failure even though we are stronger than our mothers! Built to survive alone. That’s good since that’s one of our fates! I’m literally on my morning commute craving wine. But I’m just gonna save my coins and pull over and get that cheap wine…like the Boone’s Farm! Ain’t drank that shit since college but no time to spend more money on expensive wine….when Ada says I’m gonna need every dime for my retirement either on Pookie’s island or a homeless shelter…no in between baby! Yea this is the life of the brilliant Gen X woman! Did I mention that we have also lived through 9/11 and other terror attacks around the world?! No wonder believing in fairytales and a good life are so hard! We are too busy dodging bullets off our asses while protecting our loved ones, grabbing a few degrees, bringing home the bacon, and lecturing our husbands mistresses turned girlfriends on how not to mistreat our children when they are in their care! Wtf?! I’m exhausted from being exhausted. Not to mention, if you are a black Gen X woman, you have a host of other problems that other Gen X women do not. White Gen X women do not have to worry every time their man or son leaves the house that he may not be returning unless their men are military, firefighters, or cops! So…we have racism on our backs and innocent black men that we love being gunned down while their law enforcement murderers go free in an unjust system! We are more likely to be single moms too! I could go on and on with the plight of the black Gen X woman but I’m fucking depressing myself! So we are fucked. Got it! What next?! ~KJM on Temptation Tuesday! Here’s the link to Ada’s article…http://www.oprah.com/sp/new-midlife-crisis.html?FB=fb_omag_new_midlife_crisis_feature Please heed my warning and get the cheap yack out before reading one word. Trying to save y’all the funk I’ve been in ever since I read it! Fuck….
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