eeeeep. It’s coming. My birthday. 32. Thirty TWO. Like, really thirty, now. No going back. I never accidentally say an age starting with twenty anymore. Actually, these days, when asked how old I am, I usually first say “how old do you think I am?” Luckily I am mostly asked this by cabbies in dark cars and small children, so the range is anywhere from 14 to 50 because “well, that’s how old my mom is.”
I love other people’s birthdays. I love buying them baskets of absolutely useless things and wrapping them in too much tape. I love decorating the room while they’re asleep. I love going around the table and making everyone say something they love about that person or share a good story.
But this thing started happening a few years ago where I get weird around my birthday. I get depressed, I shut in, my heart beats fast and I start comparing and resenting people for all the things they have that I want and don’t. For some reason, it all too often feels like I’m too much of something, or not enough of another. And that’s why I don’t have what so many others have.
The comparison game is a foolish and useless activity, I know, but something about another year coming and going so officially does things to a single woman. Especially a single Christian woman, I think. There aren’t many spaces for us.
I saw this thing on instagram and it said “people be posting pics of their houses and kids and stuff and I still haven’t unpacked from a trip I look in 2009.” I could not double tap that quote fast enough. Every time I open my bags to go somewhere, there are many “ohhhhhh so THATS where you’ve been!” And I think that’s my metaphor – I’ve been traveling and going and finding and losing pieces of myself in different people and places and goals unfulfilled. I’ve been so unstable and living in the unknown while so many of my friends find that great job, that one person, make those cute babies.
Traveling and teaching abroad is great, but I start to feel more like I should find a way to settle. That sounds bad. Maybe just…keep working on being a better version of me. And living the dream and loving every moment so that when my circumstances change, I can look back and be like “I YOLOED SO HARD MY YOUTH WAS GREAT SO READY TO ADULT.”
I feel like I say this a lot, but I MEAN it this time. I’m trying to start taking better care of myself. Things aren’t as easy as I’m getting older. I can’t operate on little sleep like I used to, sometimes just one glass of sangria can give a hangover, I’ve discovered I have to honor my lactose intolerance (for my own sake and for everyone around me).
Sometimes the light catches just right in the elevator and there are grey hairs and even! dark hair! on your chin! Like grandmas have! And I see them every once in a while and cuss them out and ask what they are doing so far from where they are wanted. And wrinkles are REAL.
I actually have to stretch after working out. Turns out one cannot live on Cheetos alone. I say this while googling “can flaming hot cheetos affect your bowel movements?” to solve a dilemma I’ve had for a while, which I was mistakenly identifying as intestinal bleeding. Sometimes Ebola, in my darker moments.
I’m trying to wear sunscreen for reals and moisturize and eat healthy/workout. I’m starting this program called Tone It Up with my younger sisters and cousins and like every cute 23 year old in America, it seems. We have special instagram accounts and everyone posts pics of their meal prepping. Mine look all cute, but what you don’t see is the mess just outside the frame, because it looks like a crime scene after I chop tomatoes. (You also won’t see all the feta and croutons and bacon bits I add after the photo is posted, but…that’s neither here nor there.)
I’m currently defrosting my freezer, and the cocktail that’s helping has cucumber slices in it, so like, #healthy #adult. I’m also being more diligent about my dental hygiene than ever after a THIRD ROOT CANAL treatment, because one just wasn’t enough.
I started the crown process last Tuesday, and got a bikini wax the same day. Needless to say it was a very vulnerable day for me. I face-timed my dog later that night for a morale boost. She gets me, man.
I figured out my Brazilian online banking to organize and pay for a house trip my girlfriends and I took to a beautiful place called Ihla Grande this weekend. I don’t think many things say “responsible” like banking in a foreign language and trying to get 10 people to respond in a timely manner to a Facebook message when we can ALL SEE THAT YOUVE SEEN IT JUST ANSWER ME ASDFGHJKL. :)
While on said island, I daily faced fears of fish with my co-fraidy cat, Rachael. And we had dance parties on the beach and in the house and played Heads Up. It was some good fun.
Anyway. To help me try and handle all this birthday that I can’t stop coming, I’ve given myself over to it and am hosting my second annual family dinner/karaoke/dance fest. It’s making me put away the Christmas tree (don’t judge) and wash all my linens and reorganize my bathroom…because I’m that girl who looks under your sink, so I can imagine I have a few friends like that, too!
I’m gonna make my mom’s spaghetti because it’s the best you’ve ever had, and make white cheddar popcorn and drink wine from a mason jar and love everyone around me.
Today was about 100 degrees fahrenheit, but the temp is supposed to finally drop and we’ll see a change in the seasons. I’m hoping I can pull that off in my own seasons I’m weathering right now.
Want to get me a birthday present? You can like my blog page on Facebook here or click on the button on the right to subscribe directly here on wordpress. I have a silly thing in my mind to have 320 likes on Facebook by my 32nd birthday, and I need 32 more likes to get there, so I feel like it’s FAAAAAAATE.
Anyway. I’m off to battle the freezer again. If you need to hear it and you haven’t today, I wish you were coming to my birthday! There will be balloons. And we could karaoke. Probably to a Prince song. While drinking lemonade.
love you miss you wish you all were here.
Sunglasses Always Fit 
April 28, 2016 at 9:02 pm
Heads Up is our go-to game, too. We may or may not have played it during lunch one day. Whatever, you gotta do what you gotta do.
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