I have tried at least twice, to write down what 39 feels like. Birthday morning was normal other than I knew I was getting myself breakfast because: birthday. The day was sweet with lots of kind wishes from family, coworkers and friends. I got a cookie cake, a not so delicious cake from a local Mexican bakery, flowers, and then had dinner with friends.
And I really did want to write down what 39 felt like to me.
But the truth is it felt a little anticlimactic to me.
This morning I woke up and realized that the difference, the change has been subtly occurring all year. What felt like a breakdown was more a break apart of some delusions that I think I held on to far too tightly.
I remember after my 27th birthday suddenly feeling 27. Something clicked in my head and it shifted a lot of who I was. I remember that shift being very defining and also wildly liberating. Even eleven years later, that alteration, has stuck with me.
I’ve been looking at this year all wrong. Last night, in conversation with some friends, I could see something in their faces while we caught up. It wasn’t shame, or pity, it was confusion because they could see something I couldn’t. They saw difference and I had only been focused on loss. I thought about it last night as I was driving home, but it wasn’t until I was driving to work this morning that it all hit me.
This year has been a fracturing. I think as adults we are constantly building up glass menageries for our lives. We know that they will come down at some point, but we keep building. For me, this year, many of my menageries shattered. And I felt like some jacked-up Cinderella being left to pick up the shards of glass that were my life while clinging to some idyllic faux-fantasy that a prince my come and rescue me, or better yet, I’d find those elusive glass slippers.
I’ve spent the entire year trying to catch my breath. It occurred to me this morning that all the things I’d built were suffocating me and what I’ve really been doing is trying to figure out how to breathe all over again.
This probably makes sense to no one else but me, but this thought… this awareness… was redeeming to my heart today!
A few weeks ago, I started a 40 by 40 list. Right now, I have about 25 things on that list. Nothing necessarily major, but things that I want to do or experience or try.
Not coincidentally, Celine Dion’s “Taking Chances” circulated through my iTunes while I was typing this. LOL.
I am determined, one way or another, that this year, will be better than last. I can say with certainty, that my 30’s have been so much better than my 20’s. This decade has been wild and an absolute blast. Here’s to finishing out FOUR DECADES with a bang.
xoxo,
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