Turning 30: What Happened In My 20s Stays In My 20s. Right After This Blog.

{Today, at 3:33 pm, I’ll turn 30. It’s sort of hard to sum up a decade of madness, men and mistakes in a few words, so this is the closest you’ll ever come to Blunt Cliff Notes. While procrastinating this post, I also gave the blog a facelift. And if you can figure out how to remove that stupid orange outline on my sidebar, you would make my day.}

I always wondered what the big deal was about “thirty.”  It’s not like you’re over the hill or filling out hospice papers. It’s just thirty. 

It’s not like you have to start bringing dishes to pass at family gatherings because you are no longer a kid. It’s not like you’re going to start getting open mouth stares at the mention of being single and childless. It’s not like your license expires and your health insurance goes up. It’s not like recovery time from a night out goes from a cheeseburger and a Gatorade to a four-day process in which you hurt in places that make no sense.

Oh wait.

It is hard to remember what my life used to be like. Over the past decade, I’ve seen the best and worst in others. And I’ve seen the best and worst in myself – mostly the worst, but hey, at least that’s out of the way. At twenty, I was still with my high school boyfriend. Love was making out in dark parking lots, while I made up sixty-five different excuses as to why I didn’t answer my mom’s call. It was overdone Valentine’s Day gifts with lots of tacky red things and inedible candy hearts. And now that I have actual perspective, I can say that, yea, we loved the crap out of each other. He taught me about selfless, unconditional love. That relationship set a pattern as I left with a haunting feeling of doubt and remained in a perpetual state of confusion for years over what I wanted and needed and how I would find that balance. If I would ever find it.

I was in college not because my parents forced me or because I had great aspirations in life. That’s just what everyone did. And I love the feeling of the first day of school. I lost friends as quickly as I made them in the fickle world of self-absorbed, hormone-driven college students just trying to fit in – quite the contrast to my tiny, private high school with the same kids I’d known since 1st grade. My English 103 teacher told me I had the best talent for writing she had ever seen – frankly, I thought she was flirting with me and I didn’t give two craps as long as I passed.

Mid college years, I fell for a guy who had nearly all the criteria on my “need” list at the time. Love was possession and control. I felt claustrophobic. Doubtful; but unsure of even my doubt. It wasn’t until a year when I realized he had merely been an illusion of what I needed. The first, and least damaging, of many manipulators I would encounter in my twenties. He taught me that people always tell us the truth about themselves – it’s our fault if we don’t listen.

Amid that discovery, I was grasping for an escape. I was looking to be rescued. I needed direction and inspiration. The boy who worked in the college bookstore became all of those things to me. Love was passion and risk. He understood me in a way that has to be earned, yet we had just met. One snowy night as I walked to my car, he grabbed me and we had a conversation that changed the course of my life. He encouraged me to write. To take chances. To skip class because there are only so many perfectly beautiful fall days that one can spend daydreaming and listening to Radiohead. In a cowardly act of bravery – yes, that’s possible – I left on a plane for London the following month. Cowardly, because I was escaping. Brave, because the biggest risk I had ever taken was not brushing my teeth before bed. However, escaping didn’t work as well as I had hoped after a surprise proposal attempt from my ex.

As I explored Europe, I carried a journal of all the people I’d met. I fell in love with their stories. It was then, halfway across the world, that I realized I wanted to write for more than just a passing grade.

I came home with fresh perspective. New dreams. I started my own retail store and left college. The next two years involved a hellish ordeal of which I don’t really want to indulge. It isn’t worth it. Let’s just say, I naively thought it my obligation to do everything I could to help this person I thought I loved. I realize now it wasn’t love, because he wasn’t even who I thought he was. But I tried, while hiding it from everyone at the expense of my business and my sanity. The next two years would be an actual, literal nightmare of which I was scared to awake. Love was survival. Love was fear. Fear for his life. Fear for my life. I spent my days regretting every decision I’d made to that point. And my nights, doing anything I could to forget. 

Craving normalcy, I created a safe life for myself inside the walls of my first house and my bank job – which I hated, but figured that was what it meant to grow up. Friends were also growing up and getting families and 2.5 baths. I had finally found a stable guy who was so right in so many ways. We fought often, yet were so compatible on the “big” issues. Love was comfort and safety. When a ring entered the picture, I said yes, but my gut said no – and I wasn’t entirely sure why.

I’d lost my job, my fiancé and whatever was left of my sanity. Had a cancer scare. Men came and went. I learned how to be alone. I took up photography. A tumultuous year of jobless insomnia and depression led me back to writing and what once seemed an impossible feat became a reality. I started this blog and my freelance writing career took off, which led me to magazine jobs and editorial jobs and all sorts of things I’d dreamed of years ago in that dorm room with the boy from the bookstore. In fact,I contacted him and said  that ironically, he had inspired my first nationally published story.

I eventually got back together with my ex-fiance because of the idea of what we could be. We were good at pretending things were good. A month shy of our wedding, I left. It was incredibly scary, but in the end, we both saw it for what it was. He taught me about forgiveness, second chances and that there is such a thing as a good person who just isn’t good for you.

In many ways, I am glad to leave my twenties behind. And in many ways, I’m sad to say goodbye. They have been transformational. Interesting. Saddening. Inspiring.

The men have taught me a lot – what love looks like and what it most certainly does not. They’ve taught me that being alone isn’t scary, and it’s better than being fake happy. I’ve discovered the distinct difference between love, infatuation, desperation and competition. I know that passion is confusing. Passion does not equal love, nor are they mutually exclusive. For love without passion is worthless. I used to deem myself a “commitment-phobe.” And now I can tell you that term only applies when you’re with the wrong person.

I’ve learned that I truly do love writing. But I will no longer do it for money, only for me. 

I am still wildly annoyed by the sound of Neil Diamond, the word sausage and the way someone looks when they have mayo on the side of their mouth after eating a Panera sandwich. I drive the same crappy purple Saturn.

So, I guess I still have some growing up to do.

 

Other posts, elsewhere, I’ve written on these topics:

The Change Blog: Losing Your Job To Live Your Dream

College Crush: My First Love, A Nice Guy, And How I Effed It All Up

I have returned to blogging over at Celery and the City where I write about clean eating, healthy living and post allergy and gluten free recipes!

You Big, Fat, Fake Smart Person

Speaking of things I collect, I may have mentioned it briefly in the masterpiece entitled How To Live The Best Fake Life You Can Imagine, or several times thereafter, that I collect books.  I don’t read them, as much as I like to give the impression that I do, while underhandedly using them strictly for decorating props.  I understand this is a perplexing and tricky dichotomy considering I’m a writer. But you know how “Those who can’t do, teach?” Well, I also find that “Those who can’t write, read.” You’re welcome to leave me nasty comments in regards to that theory, but wouldn’t you rather go eat a Dilly Bar or something?  Go with the cherry. You’ll thank me.

But seriously, the books are starting to take over my life.

bookshelves

So when I’m selecting books, my focus is on the thickness and color of the cover and how well it will coordinate with the lamp, random flea market suitcase, or bookshelf that it will be sitting on or in the proximity of.  I don’t pay attention to minor details like the title or the content.  I had an epiphany recently that I should start trying to solve all my problems by dissecting different sections of my house and seeing what they reveal about me.  [Go here to see what my freezer had to say. It was shocking, to say the least.] So, we’re moving on to my books.

It’s only fitting that we start with my desk area. It’s where I am sitting right now, talking to you.  It is also where I spend almost all of my meager existence being a hermit, writing and editing with bloodshot eyes, and listening to my nineties playlist while eating very questionable leftovers. Because I can.

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Let’s zoom in on the middle cubby. When I actually started reading the titles, I discovered that these books must have been stalking me during the past couple of years.

1. Places to Stay the NightThis eerily, but accurately describes my life from the time span of 2002-2006.  If I could make one minor adjustment it would be “Random Places To Stay The Night While Escaping Your Heroin-Addict British Boyfriend, Overly-Possessive Italian Boyfriend, Or When You Decide To Go To Mexico On A Whim Or When You’re Wandering Around A European City And Refuse To Leave Your Wasted Roommate With Those Inappropriate German Guys.”

2. The Ideal Bride. Oh yes.  I couldn’t think of a better way to describe myself.  On opposite day.

3. To Love Again. And again… and again… and effing again.

4. Five Days In Paris. Please change to “Five Days In Paris Accompanied By: A Hailstorm, A Robbery, The Stomach Flu, Ungodly Frizzy Hair, World’s Meanest People, Mystery Meats Cooked In Too Much Butter, And An Unwanted Proposal.”

5. Ten Poems To Set You Free. UGH. Information that would have been useful to me yesterday!

6. Forbidden Area. Much like a fine art painting or Greek Opera, I’m leaving this one open to interpretation.

Here’s where you’ll actually get to know me: my nightstand.  This is reserved for books that I might pick up once in a while.   I don’t think it should serve as any surprise to you that WIT would be at the top of the stack, comfortably parked next to 50 Boyfriends Worse Than Yours.

Dad, You Look Like A Pencil With A Frizzy Top

My father, a self-proclaimed hippie and alcoholic until the day hemet my gorgeous mother, wore a brown leisure suit and platform shoes to his wedding.  I forgive him for this offense, only because my mother wore a black, sparkly pantsuit.

I’m amazed my father had any sense at all when it came to raising a child.  When he was 7, his mother woke him up in the middle of the night and they left town to escape his alcoholic father.  His mother worked nights as a surgical nurse and they moved every two years.  He grew up without a male influence, aside from his cousin who introduced him to drugs at age 11.

my-parentsI was born in a trailer park.  Does that mean I get to cry a river and say that I’ve had it a little worse than the rest of you?  No? But do I get to blame at least a few of my issues on that fact?  When my parents were married, my dad was making $6/hr, yet they managed to save 50% of his income a month, while my mom stayed at home with the kids.  This is could be where my Suze Ormond frugalness stems from, the kind which allows me  to be perfectly satisfied driving a ’99 Saturn with a hole in the hood, that floods every time it rains. Especially last night.

Eventually, my dad started his own business and they saved enough money to purchase a charming, completely run-down and nearly un-livable home in the country. For years, my dad awoke at 5am, and after working all day would come home to do paperwork for the business and spend every spare moment learning how to remodel that house.  That’s right, learning – from actual books. Incomprehensible, I know. But as busy as he was, trying to make a life for us, he always had time for any absurd request I might have.

Dad,

Thanks for sitting in my room every single night, while I rehashed my entire school day, complete with tearful confessions of snobby girls, mean boys, and despicable rumors.  And thanks for continuing to sit in my room every night, even when those confessions turned into eye-rolling  and the words: “I’m fine. Goodnight.”   Thanks for never missing dinner and showing up to every event in my life even though I was excrutiatingly embarrassed of your presence.  Thanks for staying up til 3am to help me grasp Chemistry, which by the way, was a battle we should have surrendered long ago.  Thank you for not using your past as an excuse, but as motivation to be better. 

Thanks for teaching me that even though people may take advantage of your kindness, you should give it anyway.  Thanks for building me that sweet swing set, which was the envy of all my friends and equipped with a sandbox litterbox for the cats.  Thanks for working so hard so that I could have a mom waiting for me after school every day.  Thanks for being so awesome that my friends wanted to come over just to hang out with you.  Thanks for being an example of how a man should love his wife.  Thanks for dropping everything to come put air in my tires, or some other mundane task that I always seem to screw up no matter how many times you’ve shown me.  Thanks for helping me crawl out of every mess I’ve made.  And there have been some big ones.  I mean, big.  But most of all, thanks for making me feel like I was the most amazing thing in the world even when I was terribly awkward and unfortunate looking.   I’ve been spared from so much because of the self-esteem that came from your unconditional support and love.  I’ve never felt like I needed anyone, or anything, to fulfill me. I’ve always thought I could do anything.  But really, it would have saved us both alot of stress if I hadn’t actually tried to. 

I almost feel like it’s been an unfair advantage, having you around.  But truth be told, you do look like a pencil with a frizzy top.

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