FIFTY ON FIFTY: A New Conversation

(as published on HealthMad)

Robbie, 53
Guitar player
August 3, 1953
San Francisco , California

Sophie,

My apologies for not getting back to you soon enough. I hope you haven't missed your deadline or something, that would make me feel like such a heel. My life has fallen apart, and, I tried to answer the questions on the sheets but I couldn't. I hate to go all California on you – don't laugh.

My life since fifty has unraveled completely. I am dead broke, I look and feel like hell, my wife wants a divorce and my kid started a fire in the house, experimenting. She's 11. It's typical, I heard, but the insurance company is investigating. I have no sense of the future and in fact, everything is about my past.

I can't afford therapy and I went on-line, I was so lonely to an on-line dating site, where they have “intimate encounters” and I met a bunch of weirdos. That's not fair. I take that back. I feel so sorry for myself. I'm pathetic. There's all this pressure and it's “ALL ABOUT THE BENJAMINS.” It really is. When you are used to having a certain amount of money when you're younger, and I did, I got enough royalty checks from being a side man with enough people, I was on the road and that pay was great but I have, you know, everything that goes a long with a sudden crash in your lifestyle when it comes to money. You know, time for Viagra. Except, I got gonorrhea—I slept with fourteen women in three years. That was my mid life's crisis. Truth is: I feel like I'm fixin' to die rag.

So, Soph, when are you turning the big 5-0? Not for a while, I know. Don't worry it won't be this bad.

LOL