30... Not quite such a dirty word

When I was younger, not that I am really that old, I always said that age wouldn’t bother me that I would not be one of the women that got all depressed when they turned thirty, after all it is just a number.  Unfortunately at the age of twenty-six it hit me, I was closer to thirty than I was twenty now. Maybe it was because of the changes that had happened in my life in that past year that made me think and with each consecutive birthday since that day thirty hung there, looming ominously; taunting me that it would soon be upon be here.

The calendar finally flipped over to 2012 and I was determined that thirty was not going to bring me down that instead I was going to celebrate in style, heck we would make it a full three day weekend blow out since my birthday landed on a Friday. Unfortunately thirty was determined it was not going down that easily, things in life happened that brought me down majorly and as May drew nearer I found myself dropping into a depressed funk.  My life was not where I expected it to be when I turned thirty, in fact since graduating the year before instead of moving forward I felt like I had moved a step back.  It took a parental smack-down , otherwise known  my dad telling me to get my head out of my butt, to get me out of the pit of self-pity that I was letting myself wallow in.

Plans changed the weekend of debauchery and excess that had been originally talked about  was whittled down to a day and it wasn’t even on my birthday but the day after. I spent the day with a revolving cast of amazing people.  It’s started with a make-over and gab session with the roomie I hardly ever see and then a heart pounding, oh shit handle gripping, hair raising ride to the renaissance festival. If you can’t tell my room-mates driving terrifies me. After a day spent in the sun, roaming among people dressed as knights, pirates, queens and trolls we made a much safer and leisurely drive back into Nashville where we met with a few more friends for dinner. Again plans were changed when the restaurant we planned to eat at was busy and had no room for us, instead we ended up next door at the gay bar that is connected to it but that was ok too because we ended up with an amazing server and probably had more fun than what we would have at the actual restaurant.

After dinner the cast of friends changed again, my roomie ran off to pick up her dogs and welcome her boyfriend home, but my best friend stayed.  Before moving our party down to our favorite club a few birthday drinks were ingested including chocolate cake shots which are now part of a birthday tradition. Drag shows, drunken dancing, inflatable plastic penis waving, mediation of an argument between my best friend and a drag king and conversations of the Doctor Who variety rounded out the evening.

  The actual day of my birthday I spent working , with the most exciting event of that day being the great romaine lettuce hunt my kitchen manager sent me on, oh and almost flying off the back of speeding golf cart my crazy roommate was driving.  I ended the day with a single drink at the bar of the restaurant I work at and listening to my drunken roommate ramble late into the evening and it didn’t bother me one bit.

Yes, it still kind of sucks that I am this old, divorced, no kids and not exactly sure which way I want to go with my career but my life is really not all that bad.  I have a job that although it doesn’t pay the best and isn’t where I thought I would be, I don’t absolutely hate, a roommate that is more like a younger sister, often time both annoying a wonderful and amazing friends. It may bug me at times that I am more often than not single but then I realized how blessed I am to have one of the most amazing men I have been lucky enough to know as my best-friend.  I didn’t feel any different than I had the day before when I had been 29 or the year before than when I turned 28 which made me realize thirty really is just a number and I will proudly claim it as my age.