It might be because I am in process of divorce, that I consciously increased my social circle, and feel free to discuss topics which I used to avoid. I keep getting a feeling for our middle age group, that we all feel trapped in our regular daily routines.
We do have senior parents to take care of, but our main energy has been absorbed mostly by the younger generation, and making money to support the immediate families. Men maybe more invovled in money making, while women cannot stay away from kids acitivities. We are bound by the results of our choices. We used to look forward to a good marriage, family with great kids; we worked hard to towards these goal but now we found the marriage is a tough thing to deal with, raising kids is an even tougher task and never ending. The reward of our effort is there: stability, kids growth, increased net worth, but why do we still feel trapped?
The trapped feeling comes from unsatisfaction. As soon as we realize that we lost ourselves: the once free spirit, the passion for life or the curiosity about people coming from abundant energy, we begin to question the 10, 15 or even 20 years of continuous effort to support our family dreams is worth losing ourselves in. We matured, we became realistic, but we miss the romance, the excitements, the dreams, or simply the privacy and personal space we never valued so much in our youth.
As I am going to detach myself from the marraige, somehow the trapped feeling became more obvious (if not stronger) to me. I can almost taste the up coming freedom, it makes my heart restless. The kids routine I cannot escape but I find myself putting less heart into them.
When kids were young and too much physical activities consumed all my time, I didn't have chance to reflect; when raising kids was still new to me and babies were so adorable, I was excited and fullfilled in some sense. So it is safe to say that the family dream was true to me for at least 5-10 years. I changed somewhere along the long path, or I simply lost my patience to stay on the track till the end of the tunnel? I felt trapped in the consequence of my choice earlier, will I feel trapped again in the consequence of today's choice 10 years from now?
Life is never confusion free; maturity always one step behind our life stage. When I am emotionally weak, I can never stop questioning myself and always feeling lost in front of choices. It is a phase, I am sure it will be over and I won't regret whatever decision I made. It is just hard during this phase.
