Act II

F. Scott Fitzgerald once said, "There are no second acts in American lives." To that I say, "Scott, you drank too much and The Great Gatsby is kind of overrated."

I feel like my life is entering its second act right now. Act I was my 20s, in which I tried to distance myself from my less-advantaged background (not to say I grew up poor, but compared to most of my university classmates, I was a barefoot hillbilly). I worked very, very hard to build the life I thought I should be leading. When I was in high school, I was a big fish in a small pond. I wanted to prove to myself and even more to other people that I could be a big fish in a big pond as well. I went to a big, private university, where I was in an elite scholars group. I chose a highly competitive career, training for it at one of the top schools in the country, and, after much toil, got to one of the top law firms in the country. If I had gone to my high school reunion, I would have presented an image of success to my former classmates. I would have presented the image of someone who "made it" instead of becoming a townie and having a bunch of kids and getting married
young and finding Jesus like most of them did.

It all looked great from the outside, but I was unhappy. I had the trappings of success, but I didn't have the human connections and interactions in my life that I wanted. I admit that I looked enviously at my married, baby-having high school friends and thought that I wanted what they had.

The heart, like nature, abhors a vacuum. I filled the empty spaces inside me with food and stuff, and I ended up overweight and buried in credit card debt. Food and stuff did nothing long-term to cure my loneliness or sense of isolation, so I ended up piling problems on top of problems without directly solving or addressing anything. And then even the facade of happiness I had crumbled to crap when I was laid off.

The world is full of stories where people take some monstrous tragedy and end up saying, "It was the best thing that ever happened to me." I tend to think these people are full of crap. I will say, however, that I think something good is coming out of something bad in that I am using this major setback in life as a reset. I'm giving myself a do-over, but retaining the knowledge that I gained from making so many misguided choices.

I don't know exactly what I'm going to do with my life from this point forward. I've lost a lot of weight, and I'm in the process of working very hard to pay off my credit card bills, so those are first steps to cope with some of the symptoms of the deeper problems I need to grapple with. I want to do something that involves human relationships more. I want to do something that lets me be myself more, enjoy my life more.