The Fourth Appointment

“Dylan, turn off the music. It’s 11:30!”

I bring my knuckles up to my eyes and give them a really deep rub. My eyelids are heavy and I’m really sleepy. It’s probably the weed.

“Dylan!! The rest of us can’t sleep with that music so loud! Turn it off!”

I don’t know what the big deal is, this music is awesome. Also, it’s really not that loud.

*knock* *knock* *knock* “Dylan!! Open the door!”

“Alright, Mom! Shut up for once in your life!”

I was never rude to my mother before. I mean, she was really protective of me, and took care of me while I was sick. She was always supportive of my endeavors up to this point, and always gave me what I needed.

What changed? Why was I now this lazy teenager with no real work ethic working on trying to get a job? And for what? You don’t need money, your parents give you everything you need. You have a car to drive to school, clothes that fit your bigger than average sized body, a roof over your head, and food on the table. What will getting a job accomplish? More work for your already loaded schedule. For someone that’s not doing so hot in school, you sure like to take on a lot of classes. No free period for you, you’ve got to have a class every hour of every day, and get a C average in all of them. And now you want a part-time job?

It was then that it had occurred to me, I’m a 40-year-old man, at a crossroads in his life, and experiencing a mid-life crisis. Not just a temporary mental illness type of mid-life crisis, but an actual event happening to me. At my 40th birthday party, everyone would always joke that I’m over the hill, on the back 9 of life, and how mid-life crises turn into expensive cars, a wild hair-do, or mistresses, or whatever else you think of when someone you know is dealing with a mid-life crisis. Unfortunately, I’m now aware that the crisis is not only real, it’s an actual event that happens to you. A rite of passage. Not really a crisis of the mind, but something all humans must experience. It’s something that happens to all of us, and it’s best to just get it over with. Sort of like exposing your kid to chicken pox to “get it out of the way.”

What’s it like? Well, it’s definitely not painful in a physical way. Muscles seem to be very relaxed, I don’t have a stomach ache or anything, maybe a headache because my brain is finally putting some WD-40 on my rusted mind locks. It’s definitely something that probably feels like a dream so that you can re-experience painful memories without actually feeling the pain.

I can’t say I understand why what is happening, is happening. And why it’s happening to me. Is this something I volunteered for that I don’t remember agreeing to? Is this something that is a rite of passage, sort of like puberty? Or is my mind just melting now that I’m that much closer to death?

It’s really interesting my mid-life crisis isn’t a new car or dying my hair jet-black. It’s re-living childhood experiences and realizing that the childhood I had experienced was not actually all rainbows and unicorns. It’s realizing I was an absolute nightmare to raise.

A few weeks ago, I had a very similar experience where I relegated to this memory of being 8-years-old, where my mother purposely exposed me to my younger brother, who was experiencing chicken pox symptoms. My mother had heard that chicken pox is incredibly contagious, and that humans are immune to a second chicken pox outbreak, and that it’s horribly worse if you get it as an adult. It wasn’t until years later that we found out that chicken pox mutates into Shingles, and that’s the reason we keep getting Shingles. If we’d eradicated chicken pox like they promised, there would be no Shingles. Shingles, of course, being the scariest disease at the time.

Of course, none of that is how I remember it as an adult, but why is this experience telling me otherwise? What is it about being 40 years old that my brain is telling me that you were actually the victim of some sort of abuse and gaslighting? And why am I just now realizing that the reason I am the way I am today is a result?

“DYLAN! I TOLD YOU AN HOUR AGO TO TURN THE MUSIC OFF!”

What is Mom’s deal today? Fine, I’ll turn it down.

What was happening to me now? It was almost as if I was experiencing my life once again, this time, I’m clearly in my angsty-teen, rebellious phase. The phase of my life where I spent most of my time in my room, listening to music, smoking weed, and telling myself that everything will somehow just “work out.”

The only problem with this scenario is that this was different from what actually happened when I was a teenager. Why am I going through an awkward stoner phase if I wasn’t an awkward stoner? I was actually a very nice boy that was really into being with friends, being around my family, and doing all of the things my mother would approve of. I was a kid with a deep-seated desire to be nurtured, by everyone, at all times. Nurtured in the way where attention was on me all the time. Nurtured in the way that I badly needed to be known as funny. To be known as unique. To be #1 at everything I find to be cool. And once it becomes cool, I’ve got to already be #1 at it.

“Oh yeah, I’m really good at pogs. I had them right before they came out.” No I didn’t.

“Oh yeah, I’ve been to all 10,000 Lakes of Minnesota.” In truth, I’ve only ever been to Minneapolis’ airport.

“Oh yeah, I’ve been swimming since I was really young when my mom sat me down in a kiddie-pool, which happens to be my earliest memory.” Did I say that last part out loud? I usually don’t tell on myself. In fact, I’m not a great swimmer at all.

“Oh yeah, my earliest memory is actually my middle brother’s 1st birthday party.” That part was the actual truth.

Why is my brother’s 1st birthday party a core memory of mine? I watched the family home video of his birthday party hundreds of times. I was always entertained and fascinated by VHS tapes and that particular technology. The concept of putting a block of plastic into that machine with the crazy electronics inside that you can see if you open the little door. Still have a VCR somewhere? Try it, there’s a lot of high-tech gizmos in there. The idea that the little blue button (it was blue, and not red, on our family’s old VCR) would take what I was watching on TV at the time, and record it. I ruined many a VHS tape in my family. It’s impossible to not find a video keepsake in my household without some sort of gloss-over of a commercial from the late 80’s over important family moments, like the moment my brother smashes his hands into his cake.

That was such a weird obsession. Maybe it was just some sort of way to have control, to know that I could create something. We had so many VHS’s borrowed from my aunt and uncle, that I later realized that they let me borrow so I could fulfill my need to ruin VHS tapes. They never wanted those for-TV movies to keep and watch later, they recorded them to give to you and ruin on your own. My aunt and uncle were clever.

This is what I’m talking about. I had not thought about that weird childhood obsession until recently. It never occurred to me, or anything I had thought about in many years. In fact, I was starting to recollect a lot of repressed memories from my childhood. At first, I thought my brain was melting because I’m now 40, and everything gets a little older and slower after that age. But these memories are telling me that my story has always been a little different than I remember, because I was blind to the truth.

Was I being protected? Am I special for some reason? Was I told one truth because the actual truth would hurt me somehow? And why did it take me until I was 40 years old to realize all of this? Or am I just a kid with a troubled past?

Yep, this is a mid-life crisis. Both the physical and emotional kind. My mind has never made me remember these thoughts in many years. And it’s either ruining my childhood, or prepping me for a better future. I can’t really tell right now. What I can tell is that now that my mind is showing me how my life should have actually turned out a different way had I known the actual truth.

I should have known better.

I should have known that when I had never been into anything “illegal,” it was because I always had a pre-conceived notion that anyone who broke the law was an evil person.

I should have known that when I had thought down on people that had tattoos, my mother had put this idea in my head that tattoos were ugly, and only reserved for criminals. Now I have 3.

I should have known that when I swore to never drink alcohol, it was because I was being protected from the alcoholism that runs rampant in my family history. Now I drink in moderation.

And now my brain is trying to tell me something. This mid-life crisis is a real wake-up call from my brain. It’s trying to tell me “You’re living your life with your mother’s point of view. Make your own path.”

Growing up, I was a kid with the bright lights in his eyes and absolutely no plan on how to get from point A to point B. From my point of view, I can only see the future standing at point B. It has never been about the journey, it’s about the destination. Once I’m at point B, from there, I’ll just wing it. No plan, no road map, no real way of getting to Point B, just somehow arriving there and assuming everything will just “work out.”

Now, at the crossroads of my life, is my brain saying I need to make a better decision to ensure the next 40 don’t go so badly? I’m really wondering what to make of all of this. Why are all of these memories coming out and why is it happening right now? Is the crisis actually a thing to experience, and not just a temporary mental illness? Because if I’m experiencing it, I’m really learning a lot about myself by hashing up old memories of why my childhood was actually miserable, and not rose-colored like my normal memory keeps telling me. Why did I grow up with one reality, and now am experiencing a different one, where I finally realize how hard it really was to raise me.

“Try Dygonine’s Mid-Life Crisis! 50 times more effective than the leading brand! Side effects can include drowsiness, dry eyes, heart attack, stroke, or death. We all need to experience it, why not go with America’s #1 trusted brand! Dygonine! Ask your health care provider to see if Dygonine is right for you.”

It’s getting harder and harder to tell if I volunteered for this experience or not. I don’t remember agreeing to this, nor doing anything different in my life. All I know is that I recently turned 40, and life seems a little bit different.

The crisis does not happen all at once, nor does it have the same effects each time I have the experience. Sometimes, life will go on as normal. I get up, go to work, come home, watch TV while I eat dinner, then go to bed. Other days, I revert to a state where a song, food, phrase somebody says, etc. triggers something in my mind that reminds me of a time in my past where I did something, or said something, that made a large impact on the kind of person that I became.

The thing that seems to scare me the most is that I did have to endure quite a lot of heartbreak over my first 40 years. Deaths, deep relationships that didn’t work out, losing jobs, being a fan of sports teams that don’t win championships, these are all things that I didn’t like experiencing the first time, am I going to have to re-live all of those experiences again? I used to tell myself that those were the experiences that helped me learn, that helped me grow. I don’t think I would have made it to 40 had I not learned from my mistakes. I worry that having to re-live all of my mistakes will only make things worse. So why am I re-living all of these experiences that only seemed to cause me pain?

“Look, man. I’m just the orderly. I’ll be sure to tell the doctor that you have questions.”

I really have no idea what’s going on. I’ve been trying to tell a doctor, a therapist, anybody about this mid-life crisis. Every time I seem to bring it up, I just get ignored, or brushed off. All I’m looking for at this point is an answer. Is this mid-life crisis something I need to be worried about? Something that is trying to reach me from an unconscious state? Or am I just mentally ill?

I can’t change the past, so I’m not sure what lesson is to be made here. I do know how I made it to 40 with a really unhealthy diet, an extreme reluctance to exercise, and then come to realize that I actually wasted my life up to this point. I mean, the lesson I could learn is that now can be a new beginning, and had you made a different choice back then, you wouldn’t feel the way you feel now. Things could have been better. Or worse. The only way to have been sure was to make that life decision when you did. So, maybe your future is trying to tell you that there’s a life decision to be made right now.

“Alright, Dylan. You’re all done?”

All done? All done with what?

“Thank you for choosing Dygonine. Please stop by the receptionist’s desk to sign out.”

“But wait, I don’t know what to do now.”

“Yeah, that happens a lot. Everyone experiences Dygonine differently.”

I walk out of the room right up to the receptionist’s desk. I feel as if I just woke up from a really long nap, did I fall asleep at the dentist again?

“Would you like to schedule your next appointment?”

“I’m sorry, I must have been put on some crazy medicine, what is this for again?”

“It really does happen all the time, sir. This is Dygonine, America’s #1 trusted mid-life crisis experience. You just went through your 4th experience, would you like to schedule your 5th?”

I’m not sure I want to, seeing as how all this most recent experience has told me is that my childhood is not as I remember it, but one that made me realize that I need to make some better decisions if I want the second half of my life to be better than the first half.

“No thanks, I think I got what I came here for.” I tell the incredibly nice and patient receptionist. She smiles at me, and tells me how to find the exit. The weird part is, I don’t ever remember being here before, but apparently, I have been here 4 times.

I’m not exactly certain what it was I just experienced, but I do know that I am feeling a certain desire to make some decisions that future me can look back upon and be happy when he revisits this timeline as an old man. Maybe I do want a 5th experience, one when I turn 65, and I look back on my 40-year-old self and visit this timeline and tell myself not to change a thing. Not to dwell on negative memories. And not to be ashamed of the person I am because I was doing my absolute best.

I hop into my car, and the radio is tuned to a station playing a commercial.

“When you’re in need of a new purpose in life, reach out to a Dygonine specialist. They’ll help you through your mid-life crisis and give you a reason to make the second half of your life better than the first. Using our patented technology, we help you discover how the decisions and choices you made in your childhood helped shape the wonderful human you are today, and how you can shape the next 40 years of your life.”

So, that settles it. My mid-life crisis is my brain trying to tell me to make my future better than my past. I should have known.