I would really appreciate some thoughts/advice/outside perspective on my situation as I'm driving myself mad going over and over things in my head all day. I feel I can't see the wood for the trees now.
I'm 47, DS1 has gone off to uni this term and DS2 is very busy and self-sufficient. Although I have worked since having them, it's always been part-time or casual to fit around them rather than being any kind of a career; DH and I made the decision very happily that this would be best for the children and our family. In the meantime he has started a business which is flourishing. At the moment I don't have a job or a direction and am finding it very hard to see a way forward. I have a degree and post-grad qualifications, am articulate and presentable with lots of experience working with people but now I look in the cold light of day I don't seem to have anything very concrete to offer an employer. Suddenly I feel as if I've been brought up really short, like hitting a brick wall, to find myself with no purpose, no identity, no value....We don't especially need the money but somehow that makes it worse because I don't want to keep freeloading now the children are effectively gone and if I don't contribute financially that means I'm even less relevant. I really feel my confidence is at rock-bottom; all I can think about is that my usefulness is over and whatever can be in my future to change that and make me worthwhile? I feel full of nostalgia for the days when the children were young, and when I could have made different decisions to preempt where I find myself now. DH is nothing but supportive but I think one day the scales will fall from his eyes and he'll look at me and recognise me for a waste of space with nothing interesting to say. Employers don't want people without particular expertise at my age. I spend hours scrolling through pages and pages of jobs but I don't fit the person specs of even the most low-level ones.
Many people would swap places with me, I know, but I feel very desperate about who I am and what is coming next for me, in a way I never expected to. I have racing thoughts and tears and sometimes think I'm going loopy trying to think like a headless chicken what I'm going to do now and for the next xx years. Self-pity isn't an endearing quality, either, I know, but I don't know how to snap out of it and it has helped to write it all down.