My Brilliant Mid-life Crisis, Followed By My Delusional One

There is a strong possibility that I have had two mid-life crises… and I’m still dealing with the fallout of the second.

My daughter’s brilliant mid-life crisis.

That’s the way the mother referred to me going to university for the first time at the age of thirty-seven.

I didn’t see it as such, I had simply gotten bored with the humdrum of life and wanted to expand my mind. After recovering extremely well from back surgery a year earlier, I was fitter than I’d ever been.

✅ Body

The end of a relationship had seen me becoming bitter which concerned me greatly, so I had launched myself into seeking enlightened teachers and teachings. After a year of dedicated study and practice, my spiritual and personal development had improved tremendously.

✅ Spirit

Now for my mind!

I applied to the University of Western Australia (UWA) as a mature-aged student and was accepted into the hallowed halls of higher learning. I started out with one unit — just one to see if my brain would still be able to process information at an academic level after being out of a classroom for twenty years.

I took LING1101: Linguistics: Language and Communication. My professor was hot and French! I stared longingly at her as the differences between semantics and pragmatics dripped off her little French tongue. I enjoyed that class immensely, not just for my crush on the professor, but for the content as well, and it showed. The final grades were released on the student portal and I had earned a distinction for the unit.

I was chuffed — it seemed that I could do it!

The next semester I took two units and then three the following one. According to university policy, I was now considered a full-time student and I felt it. I dropped a day at work to accommodate my study schedule and despite working only four days a week, according to the labour laws of Australia, I was still working full-time.

For one full year I kept up this schedule, officially studying and working full-time. I was exhilarated, my mind stretched as I lost myself in academic journals and university assignments. I was also totally exhausted by the time the end of each semester came around, collapsing in a neat little puddle after each final exam.

“I think you’re incredible.”

“You’re stronger than I am.”

“You’re amazing.”

The compliments kept coming the further into my studies I got.

It seemed that this mid-life crisis was acceptable, not only to my mother, but to the rest of society.

I had completed my first year of university part-time and couldn’t bear the thought of keeping up this pace for another four years, so I left my full-time job, got two part-time jobs, and registered for an actual full-time course load. My earnings took a hit and so I moved out of my rental, my kitty Jaime in tow, and rented a room in someone else’s house.

Due to circumstances beyond my control (mainly due to the owners selling their properties) Jaime and I had to move seven times during those two years. In some places we weren’t treated particularly well, my fortnightly rental payment being the main focus of their tolerance of the two of us being the same space.

We made it through, finding solace in each other, and in March 2015 I crossed the dais to shake the hand of the UWA chancellor as some of my friends whooped in the back of the hall.

That single moment remains one of the best of my life.

I was now Vanessa Brown, BA (Psych).

It came at a heavy price though.

During my first year of studying full-time and shortly after I turned forty, I was diagnosed with burnout and clinical exhaustion. The hectic work and study schedule plus the constant moving as well as trying to keep up with friends had finally caught up with me. I had days where I struggled to put words together to make sentences and this terrified me.

Despite all this, my mid-life crisis was scholarly and as such, acceptable.

Once I graduated I went back to work full-time, rented a little house in Perth’s northern suburbs, and promptly embarked on my second degree part-time. Two years went by and my health improved. On March 11th 2017, I crossed the dais for the second time, this time with my mother in attendance.

I was now Vanessa Brown, BA (Psych), BSc Hons. (Psych) — a moment of reverence please!

No sooner had I finished up my first mid-life crisis, I began working on my second.

On April 5th 2017, I went to a Chicks concert at the Perth RAC Arena with a dear friend, and it was here that the second mid-life crisis hit me like a steam train. As Natalie Maines said goodnight to a room of screaming fans, I found myself whispering “take me with you.” The band is from Texas and that is exactly where I wanted to be.

I mulled over this moment of clarity for a few days, not feeling very clear at all, and finally called a friend over to help me make sense of my intuitive hit and wanton dream.

The thing was, I had emigrated to New Zealand in 2003 and then again to Australia in 2007. Ten long years had past and I had built a good life; I had a three-bedroom home in the suburbs, two degrees under my belt, a group of good friends, and a reputation for being Stable Mable. I was contemplating the breakdown of all that.

Which is exactly what I did! When I go for broke folks, I do it right!

I packed up my life on a wish and a promise and headed off to the good ole US of A, my sixteen-year-old kitty in tow.

This is where my life really started to unravel.

With charged political climates and immigrants being framed as the reason for the breakdown of Western civilization, my attempts at getting a job in a desperate market — the need for Special Education teachers was at an all-time high — failed. I was unable to get the job and the subsequent visa that I needed to stay. Jaime and I were three days from being homeless in San Antonio, Texas, when Divine intervention sent me a saviour.

I met an old cowboy at a local bar who offered me a place to stay at the little cottage on her ranch. As she was introduced by a good friend and vouched for, Jaime and I moved in three days later.

If you’re up for a good chuckle, you can read all about my experiences in redneck country in Tales from the South: Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.

Despite the win in that moment in that honky tonk on that warm February evening in 2018, my quest to stay eventually came to a devastating end.

After eighteen months of trying, I finally had to acquiesce that I was not going to be successful in my attempt to live in the US. I headed to Costa Rica to teach English and figure out exactly what the hell I was going to do with the mess I had created of my life.

I was flat broke, my angel in fur was still with the cowboy in Texas, and I was more depressed than I had ever been in my forty-five years of life.

No money, a job going nowhere, and unable to see a future, from the outside this mid-life crisis was was completely and utterly unacceptable.

Desperate to find a little breathing room and some time to think, I booked a one-way ticket to to Canada where the cowboy reunited me with my little angel in fur — my beloved Jaime.

It was here that I found my my nirvana.

Over the last three years, I have travelled in and out of Canada in intervals to renew my visitor’s visa. I am still no closer to gaining residency in the only place that I call home.

The fallout of my “unacceptable” mid-life crisis is ongoing but despite it all, I know that I’m on the right track for a future I’ve only ever dreamed of having.

I believe that I was broken down to be re-built into Vanessa 2.0: a writer and a teacher, delivered to the place where a new chapter is set to begin.

Everything is as it should be and I’m right where I need to be.