How long are mid-life crises supposed to last? Because I think I’m still having one.

It started before my birthday last September, my self-styled crisis, and though I’m feeling much better in many ways I’m feeling worse in others.

Well, not worse. I don’t feel bad, exactly. I just don’t give a shit about a whole huge section of my life.

I seem to like best the parts of my life that occur places other than my home.

I like my job, I like my band, I like my local bars and restaurants, I like my friends. I don’t want to go home after visiting any of those places. I get mild baby anxiety symptoms when driving home.

Yes, I just said that: going home makes me anxious. Because I’m clearly in deep denial about things.

Aw, fuck.

I’m hip deep in the seven-year-itch and I’m trying to figure out if I still like being married. Actually, no I’m not – I know I don’t like it right now. What I’m trying to figure out is if my selfish discontent is enough of a reason to kill a perfectly good, took-me-years-to-find, warm and solid relationship.

This is not a fun space to be in. I feel like a total cunt.

I could go on and on and on describing all the shitty, destructive, heartbreaking relationships I went through before I found a man who loved and wanted me, and I could compare and contrast all night, illustrating how hard this relationship rocks. And there’s really nothing wrong with it. My home life is smooth. We laugh every day. We never argue about the things that most couples divorce over because we’re both really laid back.

But. While there’s nothing wrong with my marriage there just isn’t much right with it, either. I’m wondering if this is temporary grass-is-always-greener phase, or if I really am discontented in any kind of meaningful or significant way.

(Someone said something to me the other day, something that really struck me: “I want to be with someone who will make me be more than I am by myself.”

And I asked myself, am I more than I would be alone? And the answer, I think, is no. I’m not. I’m less, because I spend so much of my time caring for him that I end up not caring so much for me.

I don’t know that I believe that being with another person, any other person could ever make a person become more than they are alone. It is an interesting thought-experiment, though.)

It seems I’m tired of giving. Of being required to give, of having agreed to give so much of myself to another person. Tired of having to be pleasant, available, open. I don’t want to talk about my fucking day, I don’t want to cuddle, I don’t want to be propositioned, I don’t even want anybody to be there when I get home. I want to be able to go somewhere, anywhere that is totally and completely MINE and where no one has the right to walk in and expect anything of me without being invited.

I spend a lot of time in my office, but my husband just walks in and bugs me. He’s not trying to bug me, he’s just trying to hang out with his wife — the one who has been ignoring him a great deal for about five months now. But it feels like he’s bugging me, and I’m discovering that it pisses me off that I’ve made decisions that have put me in a position where I have essentially given up my right to be totally autonomous ever again. I’m not a me, I’m a we, and I don’t like it. It’s our house, our life, our world.

I really don’t feel like I have the right to say to him that I want him to stay the fuck out of my room. I mean, this is what I always wanted, right? A life partner. To never be alone. To be known and loved. He’s my husband, my partner, he should be able to ask me for my attention and affection. He deserves.

Sad thing is, apparently I need a great deal more space than he does. He seems to be infinitely capable of sustaining a level of physical and psychic intimacy that makes me feel like I’ve lost my boundaries altogether. And the experiment of the past few years of my marriage has taught me that when I feel like I’ve lost my boundaries altogether? I. Go. Nuts.

I get crazy, depressed. I have these terrifying, awful panic attacks.

Who knew! It turns out I’m really, really good at denial… and all this time I thought I was really in tune with myself!

Christ.

Reading the blogosphere yesterday killed me. All these single folk going on and on about how they wanted intimacy, to belong, to have someone wondering where they were, to have and to hold, yada yada yada. And I’m thinking, What I would give to be alone! To not have to answer to anyone! To schedule my own meals, sleep times, social times! To not be a fucking ‘we’! To be able to make decisions by myself again! Oh God, to control my own life!

But it’s been so long that I don’t know if I really want what I think I want. This could just be a phase, a step of personal evolution. Growing pains. Does anyone really want to be lonely?

I am a pretty selfish person. I’m great at giving when I choose to give, but once I pass a certain line I resent it. I didn’t know this about myself, but after observing the shape of my panic disorder over the past few years I have to acknowledge that it’s true: I didn’t want to know I was selfish, that I resented sharing myself and my space so much, so I internalized it and became sick.

I basically don’t want anyone depending on me. If that’s not the very definition of selfish, I don’t know what is.