I’m days away from my thirtieth birthday and virtually NOTHING is how I pictured it.
If you had told me ten years ago that I’d be single and childless and living in my hometown, I would’ve laughed you out of the room.
If a friend told me at twenty-five that I wouldn’t be married to the guy I was currently splitting the rent with, or that I’d quit my cushy job to go camping in the wilderness by myself, I would have thought they were having a stroke.
And, if anyone had had the gall to tell me a year ago, just last June, that I’d return to DC, move in with my parents, and start work as a matchmaker, I would have assumed they were talking about someone else’s life.
And yet, here we are.
Because nothing ever really goes according to plan, right?
If I’ve learned anything in my three decades spinning around the sun, it’s that the unexpected is actually pretty par for the course.
Today, I have a few more fine lines around my eyes than I’d like, and despite frequent yoga classes, my flexibility is deteriorating to an embarrassing degree, but for the most part, I am young and spry and chipper.
I don’t feel thirty.
Whatever that means. Because honestly, what the heck is an age supposed to feel like? You’re never as old as you’re about to turn, so you have no comparison point.
But I digress. Before I get my mind totally knotted up, I guess I just want to bask in the okayness of all this.
I’m not going to impart wisdom (because ha! Like I have any wisdom to impart!) but I’m pretty pleased with where I am and what I’m doing and the life that I’ve created for myself. Not everyone gets to turn thirty. Getting older is a privilege that I want to never take for granted. It’s okay to age.
Plus, if you’re lucky, there’s cake.