Anna's Story

Anna's Story

"My life is so depressing," I complain to my boyfriend. "They have prescription drugs for that," is his ever so compassionate response. "I think I'm going through mid-life crisis," I tell one of my coworkers. "Can't be," she replies. "You're not old enough."

Wait a minute. Am I the only one who thinks the phrase "mid-life crisis" is a blatant misnomer? It seems to be intrinsically flawed. For one thing, it implies a singular event, one major crisis that eventually subsides and goes away. Then there is the vague qualifying prefix: what exactly is mid-life, anyway? Your median age depends very much on who you are -- black women live an average of five years less than white women, and black men have an even lower life expectancy (the lowest, in fact). For most of us, there are usually multiple crises, and they generally begin to occur at the point -- no matter how old you are -- that you realize all the plans you made for your life just aren't coming true. And they ain't going to, either.

Is mid-life crisis even a legitimate diagnosis? Or just an old school way of thinking of real mental illness -- kind of like how we used to just call people with Alzheimer's "senile?" Regardless of its authenticity as a psychiatric analysis, the reality is that it can be depressing to think you are getting nothing you want out of life, or when you feel that you have been shafted into an existence that holds no promise for you. If you have no concept of what I'm talking about, count yourself among the blessed; nearly everyone I know has been through this deep blue funk. Furthermore, I've come to the conclusion that there's no real cure short of medication, winning the lottery or getting some Jesus -- which isn't a bad idea for most of us anyway. In the meantime, we make do, we get by, we keep