What Happened to the First Half of my Life?

For the past few years, I've been going through a sort of "dark night of the soul".  This post is my attempt to verbalize my thoughts and feelings.  Feel free to skip it if you like, as it may turn out to be more emo than goth.  Never having met any emo people (that I know of), I really can't tell.

I moved to the East Bay from San Francisco when I was 25 years old and had just gotten married.  Things have changed a lot in The City (and in my life) in the last 26 years, more than I could have believed possible.

The apartment building I lived in from the time I was four years old until I was 22 is still standing, but I heard that the inside was entirely renovated several years ago, and I wouldn't recognize it today.  It's also now priced higher than I could afford on my current salary.  I think my mom was paying less than $400 a month for it when she moved out.

The last time I drove through the neighborhood where I grew up, most of the businesses I remember were gone.  A few of the "big" stores and restaurants were still there, but it was basically a strange place to me.  If I hadn't recognized the street names, I'd have thought I was lost!

I was filling out a job application several months ago on which I was asked to list the names, addresses and phone numbers of all the employers I've ever had.  It's been so many years since I worked for most of them that I had to look them up, and I was shocked beyond belief to discover that every one of them has either gone out of business or been taken over by another company in a merger and now bears that other company's name.  Every.  Single.  One.

Since then, I've been informed by professionals that prospective employers don't want to know what you were doing more than 10-15 years ago, so those jobs have been removed from my resume.  Now it appears that my current employer is the only one I've ever worked for, which is totally depressing.

Now, combine all that with the fact that I started working for my current employer right after I left my ex and  moved into my current apartment, and then I met my current husband. New home, new job, new man, new life, all at the same time.  I'm starting to feel as though the whole first half of my life has disappeared.  Other than in my memory, there is little, if any, evidence that it ever existed.  Does that mean I'm disappearing as well??

In early October, quite possibly on my father's death anniversary, my father-in-law had a heart attack.  He sees his doctor regularly, gets tested yearly for any problems with his cholesterol, and no one had ANY idea that one of his arteries was in the process of becoming completely blocked.  Fortunately it was "mild" attack, meaning there was no damage to his heart.  They put in a couple of stints, and he stayed in the hospital while they figured out the right combination of medications.  A couple of days later, they went back in and put in a pacemaker while he was still in good condition, "just in case".

This was a wake-up call, not only to him, but to me.  And I realized that all this is connected, even if it seems a bit convoluted.  Our culture, and indeed, most cultures today, run on chronos (linear) time, which has a beginning, a middle and and end, and is broken up into specific, measurable amounts.  We have calendars, birthdays, deadlines, and all sorts of devices to remind us constantly of "what time it is".  And our hearts (or pacemakers) are ticking steadily away, marking the passing of our lives.

On the other hand, Nature runs on kairos (cyclical) time, which has no noticeable beginning or end because everything is one eternal round.  Spring turns into Summer, which merges into Fall, which eventually leads to Winter, which gradually becomes Spring again.  Seeds are planted, they grow into plants that flower, go to seed, then die; when winter is past, the new seeds grow into plants that flower, then...  You get the idea.

Now here's where it gets interesting -- as in the Chinese curse, "May you live in interesting times".  What happens when you combine linear time with cyclical time? For me, the problem is when something like work, that should be on linear time, feels like it's on cyclical time.  Then the work becomes just one eternal round that goes on forever and will never end. This is what I've been feeling for the past five years. Combine that with the disappearance of my early life, and what do I get?  Well, it feels like the death and decay of all I ever was before this moment in time, with this current moment going on forever, and I do not like it.  Not one little bit.

So, now what?  My hope is that, when I finally find a new job to grow into, I will be able to grow in other ways as well. But I know it's not just the job situation, it's ME in general that needs to grow into something new.  That's probably what's happening, and hopefully I'll enjoy the results, but the process is extremely painful, more so than I've ever experienced before. 

So... have you ever had a "dark night of the soul"?   What kind of person did you become in the process?  What differences do you see in yourself now?  Are you happy with the changes?