Oh, I hate to be such a cliché. But today is my birthday and I am feeling a bit bummed out. I'm back in the same job I was in a year ago, and it's not the world's greatest job. I was single on my birthday last year, but I had Ricky, my then work boyfriend, giving me lots of time and attention. Now, I have no cute boys giving me time and attention and I'm still getting over the sting of being dumped. Ricky brought me a cup of cappuccino from Starbucks as a birthday present (1. Don't forget - we still work together! 2. I recently went to Italy and fell in love with cappuccino; and 3. Starbucks has terrible, terrible cappuccino.) Serving the current function of "safe punching bag" in my life, I sent Ricky a text rant today that blamed him for everything from breaking up with me, to bringing me crappy cappuccino to my being another year older. Older? Yes. More mature? Possibly not so much.
When I'm feeling down I try to be proactive, lest I wallow so long and so deep in self pity that I am unable to escape my own self-imposed misery. So I typed out "Reasons to feel good I'm another year older." And then I sat and stared at the blank page. Hmmm. I started to type "I'm healthy and strong" but then I stopped myself. That goes in the category of "Things to be grateful for." And luckily, I don't have any trouble writing that list. I have much to be grateful for, starting with the good fortune to be born when, where and to whom I was and ending with all the amazing people in my life today.
Being happy about being older, about being squarely on the steady march to 40, 50 and beyond... That's much more challenging. Eventually I came up with 6 reasons, all of which, except the last, are admittedly lame. I actually started with the ol' standby "wiser." (Is that just something we tell ourselves to ease the sting of aging? Well, in my case the answer is a resounding YES!) Out of desperation I put "At least I'm still pretty" as #5. Really? That's the best I could come up with? Lame, and it has nothing to do with being a year older. The 6th and best was "There are a lot of people who are happy I'm alive and kicking another year."
To those people, thank you. Thank you for being you and loving me, warts, rants and all. I suppose growing older isn't so bad so long as you have some wonderful people to do it with. And I just thought of another reason - the excitement of looking forward to what the next year will bring.
3 comments:
Dope.
-M.
happy belated birthday. I had a bday last month and went through the same thing, but the a very wise person told me the only alternative to getting older was being dead and that put things in serious perspective!
don't underestimate wisdom with age!! with another year under our belts we are better able to connect to ourselves, we are closer to understanding our place in the world... with time we are better able to appreciate the people and things in our lives... we are more grateful with age... we are closer to figuring out what we truly want, what we don't want.
i say bring it on! wiser? you most certainly are.
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