Thirty: A rambling

It's 12:01 am and like a child who waits up for their Santa Claus or Easter Bunny to arrive and bring them a surprise; I too wait up for something. I've anticipated this moment for the past year. I've dreaded it, loathed it, loved it, tried to lose weight for it, planned a party for it, stopped planning a party for it, and waited up for it.

I'm not quite sure what I'm looking for today.

It is October 31, 2010, and I am officially thirty years old.

For some odd reason I had half expected to turn into something at this magical midnight, but much to my amazement it feels like New Years Eve 1999. Do you remember that year? Everyone sat around and anticipated the end of the world at the stroke of midnight, but nothing happened. People stayed the same. The weather stayed just as it was 13 seconds prior to the time changing from 1-9-9-9 to 2-0-0-0. Just as I sat and watched the clock on that new Years Eve - preparing in my mind for a potential doomsday, but neglecting to lift a finger to change it - I sit in my pajamas, wipe Gia's drool off of my arm, and wait while the clock ticks still, and doomsday never comes.

I am thirty, and I can't stop saying it.

Some people make lists of things they want to do before their fateful thirty arrives. I hadn't really thought of it all that much until now. Do I have a list of things I feel that I should have accomplished before thirty?

*I wish my ass wouldn't have brought me into this age bracket at this size.
*I wish I would've been stronger, sooner.

-There are things however, that I am happy to have done. Places that I am happy to have traveled and people that move me all the time.

+My daughter, as most people say about their little ones, has changed my life.
+The family I have, though trying, and stressful as we all may be in our interactions at times - loves me, and I them - no matter what.
+I have made three of the very best friends a girl could ever want or deserve to have.
+I've seen more bands than my 16 year old hands could have ever prayed for in those days.
+I've met a legend.
+I've fallen in love.
+My book has begun ...metaphorically and physically.
+I'm committed to school.
+I've suffered.
+I learn something, every. single. day.
+My passport has been used.
+I've done things to make my parents blush.
+I've given.

I am done with my twenties and thank-my-stars, I have taken enough photos to remember the best times and retrace my steps of the even better times.

When Gia turned one I cried because my little girl was finished being a baby. I cried a few minutes ago for reasons quite similar. I wasn't upset that she was growing into someone new and older, but there was something heartbreaking about having to say goodbye to a time she'll never get back. My twenties are the same. I'm trying not to be completely bummed that they are over, because the events that occurred in those years were the events that established who I am and who I love at this very moment in time. Still, I feel like there is some apprehension to turning thirty. Maybe the reason that so many of us (please, please let me be right - that there are MANY of "us" and that I am not imagining all of this)are frightened by this particular age is because of the responsibility it brings with it. I'm no longer in my twenties, thus I am required to be more focused and stable than I've ever been in my life, because who wants to watch a thirty-something fuck-up left and right? No one. People look past the mishaps in your twenties and write off the stupidity to acts of capricious youth. In your thirties, people just write you off as a fuck-up. That's a lot of pressure in my book.

If you're reading this and you think that I should shut up and eat cake, then high-5. I wish I didn't over analyze things sometimes, but I do. That is me.

It's 12:40am and I'm 40 minutes into being thirty years old. It's 12:40 am and I've "seen Santa" and "checked out what the Easter Bunny left me," and if it's all right with you, I'm going to cozy up to a little girl who held my hand today and called me "Mommy." I promise to spend this birthday both lamenting my twenties and saying Cheers! to my thirties.

Thirty will be easier to handle with sweet little breath on my cheek and a finger in my eye. Thirty will be more interesting with 3 am trips to the potty with Gia to pee, instead drunken twenty something nights filled with 3 am trips to the potty to puke.


-m