Displaced Persons

I was raised to work. From the time I entered kindergarten it was a foregone conclusion that I would eventually graduate college, move out, and get a job. My parents gave me luggage when I graduated from high school and a business suit when I graduated from college. The message was always clear in my home: grow up, move out, get on with your life.

I wasn't that my parents didn't love me. They loved me so much that they wanted to make damn sure I would never wind up in living in their basement and working at Target when I was 30 years old. And yet, here I am in my 40s having fantasies of doing just that. Even as I daily teach my own children how to be self-sufficient, I am finding myself yearning to jump on a plane and run home for a while. To take time to get back to my roots. To regroup. And to find my lost self-confidence. Because after a long, upwardly mobile career, I find myself out of work, and with skills that nobody wants or needs. Further, I am so completely bewildered by technology, that I have given up on trying to understand all but what I have to grasp in order to get through the day. I find technology to be a highly isolating force in my life. Most people would rather text than talk to each other. Wherever I go I see a sea of people face down in their devices, completely avoiding any real conversation with anyone. It saddens me.

And then there's the demise of my profession. In 2004 I was riding high on the crest of my professional wave. I was making good money, and on a steadily upward trajectory in my career. Then I got pregnant. I decided to take one year off after having my son, fully intending to return to work in a year. Instead, I moved from Chicago to California, which pretty much nailed the lid on the coffin of my career. When I attempted to find a job after a year, I found all I could find on the West Coast was freelance work, and even that dried up pretty quickly. I took odd jobs, but none of them paid enough to justify my child care expenses. Then I landed a good job that paid well for two years, but I was laid off because I couldn't work fast enough. I was too focused on quality, and not enough on quantity.

 So now I'm facing a serious sense of displacement. I'm displaced from my family, my Midwestern home, my past, my career, and my sense of belonging. I find the current state of the world bewildering beyond measure. And while I love my kids, I am a self-admitted lousy stay-at-home mom. I bore easily, and am not good at keeping children constantly amused. I am used to either going to work, or going to a rehearsal. When there is no job or theatrical project happening, I go a little crazy.

So that's why I find myself in my 40s and fantasizing about running away to my parents' basement. Of course I won't do it. But sometimes it seems a Hell of a lot easier than facing up to unemployment and the prospect of starting over so late in life.