Learning to Live

I have to admit, being an expatriate in a foreign country is hard.  You tend to feel like the oddball out a lot of the times.  I live in a small village where most of the families have roots, which I can completely relate to, as I come from a small southern town.  However, I am not only an outsider, but a foreigner as well, which takes oddball status to a whole new level.  As a result, I gravitate towards other Americans to get a sense of balance and feel true to my upbringing and inner self.  As I put in my very first post, I am a young mom.  I had my oldest daughter at twenty years old and, though some find that appalling and irresponsible, I was able to welcome that child into my life and let her work her magic to mold me into a better person not only for myself, but for her as well.  Because I am young and married and a mom, I rarely find people my own age in the exact situation.  There are very few twenty-somethings with school-aged children living in Germany close to me.  Instead, I have mom friends who are older than me, some only mid-thirties, most late-thirties to mid-forties.  In some cases, even one good friend will be turning fifty soon and she has teen-aged children.

Because of this age difference, I tend to get talked down to as being young and inexperienced in life because I chose to have my children early whereas some of these women chose career first, family later.  There is nothing I despise more than the "wait until you are older and have more experience" speech.  I'm sorry, but that's a huge pile of..well..you get the idea.  In 28 years, I have experienced a post-Vietnam vet father go through his struggles with his own mental health and struggle with alcohol, the loss of a sibling through suicide, a life-changing health crisis that almost left me paralyzed, and a move to a different part of the world.  And this isn't enough wisdom?  Come on, folks.  To add insult to injury, a very close friend of mine recently decided (after going to a self-help seminar) that she needed to phase me out of her life because I give off "negative vibes".  This from the women to whom I drove when her cat died, watched her children when she was in need of help, and tried to be there as much as possible when it was needed.  Now, I am not even deserving an explanation to the cold shoulder.

I once read that men will go through one mid-life crisis, whereas women will go through several. I believe that, as we have so many hats and roles we put ourselves into, but, come on, get your shit together, girl.  I know this comes across as negative, normally I tend to find humour in the situation when life gives me a tricky phase, but even my humour isn't black enough to bounce back from, essentially being told, "you are nothing, not even important enough to be told when you are disposed of like trash".

So, sweetheart, take a page out of your own self-help book and realize that in "phasing out", you are becoming exactly what you are avoiding becoming, toxic.  Chew on that.