Turning 30

So, I turned thirty on Monday. To be honest, I don’t know how I feel about that.

I mean, it think whenever someone hits a birthday milestone (aka a new decade) there is a bittersweet feeling. My twenties are gone. I think back and wonder where they went, if I wasted it all away because I didn’t live up my twenties, I survived them.

And on that note, there is a feeling of gratitude and lightness because I survived my twenties and now there is this entire decade before me and anything can happen (hopefully for the best).

I think these two emotions are normal for anyone who turns thirty or forty or fifty or perhaps even every year after a certain point. But for me thirty is something else – it is a milestone, not because it is a new decade or anything, but because it was an age I never thought I would reach. I know that sounds strange but for someone who wasn’t supposed to make it to grade school, it is kind of tremendous. When I was a kid, they kept pushing my life expectancy back, once I passed that age but a shortened life expectancy never went away.

Brain this, heart this, bone that – I was a medical text book on legs, before I turned 25. But then I did and I took on an entirely new list of problems and even died (on my birthday, thank you) and I had a new moved-up expiration date. I was hoping to make 28, but the idea of turning thirty was absolutely foreign to me. I never gave it much thought.

Even before my 25^th year, I never thought I would make it to thirty. I don’t know why my subconscious picked this as the age I would never see. It wasn’t something I thought about or even something that lingered in the back of my mind. It was like this accepted fact that was completely casual to me. Of course, having died, I know death isn’t casual. Maybe I always knew it was silly, maybe it seemed really, really old when I was ten, but whatever the reason thirty was the year I would never see, and now I have.

It feels good to know that I made it, but to be fair I haven’t believed I would be done by thirty for the last two or three years. So relief is not in the cluster of what I am feeling, though gratitude and the potential for so many possibilities are. I don’t feel any different than I did last week, or even when I was 28 (27 was an iffy year medically so I stop at 28). But I wasn’t expecting to feel any different. Even my birthday itself was routine.

The time of my birth five years ago was also the time of my death (yep, to the minute – creepy right?) and this year when it happened, it was this monumental moment that I didn’t even realize was here until it had already passed… an hour later. But that is what I like about it I guess. I don’t need a flair for the dramatic and unless it is a surprise from my husband or a party I can do without any surprises… really, I promise.

My only goals for this year (and the rest of my life really) are to live as best I can and be as happy as I can. So, here is to a new year, a new decade, the age I never thought I’d reach. Here’s to being thirty.

-DMW