My 29th birthday

I am turning 29 next month. It's a weird feeling. This next year will be the last year in my 20s. The funny thing is that I go back and forth about feeling my age. I may own a car, pay all my own expenses, and have a mortgage, but there are days where I still feel like a kid. For example, last week I was called for jury duty. So I stayed with my parents to be closer to the courthouse and I drove past my old high school to get there. The main part of the school is the same, but they've built outward a bit. I remember driving back and forth to school, picking up and dropping off friends, and going out to lunch with my best friend. In a way, driving that route made me feel like I was 16 again, with all of the pressures of being a teenager. Stuff like whether I was going to pass my AP tests to get credit for college classes, whether I had the cool clothes, and whether I'd grow up and marry my high school sweetheart even though my family couldn't stand him.

It's weird how those kinds of pressures seem so small to me now, but they were really no less difficult for me to navigate at the time than say the every day pressures of my job at this point in my life. We grow older, and the problems may change, but there are always problems to deal with.

When I look back at my life so far, I sometimes wonder how I've made it to this particular place in the world. Where I'm at now seems so different from what I'd planned. I wonder what my 16 year-old self would say looking at me today. Surely, I'd be disappointed by some things, because I think I've lost some of my idealism along the way. Things that I was so passionate about and debated fiercly have faded from a roaring fire to glowing embers. Occasionally, a strong breeze passes by to stoke the fire again, but the experiences of life and subsequent acceptance tame me again. It's not so much that I've changed my beliefs, but rather have come to see that everyone else is just as entrenched in their ways as I am in mine.

Of course, there would be another part of me that would be very proud that I made it through some really hard situations and ended up coming out a better, wiser, and more compassionate person. So maybe things would end up balancing out in my 16 year-old estimation.

And there are a ton of things that if I knew then what I know now, I'd have done a lot differently. Like not worrying about my weight or looks, because it was just a complete waste of time. I was healthy and pretty, and had no need to try and look just like every other girl at the school. Not worrying about having a boyfriend all the time to somehow validate who I was as a young woman. Not staying with someone who was unworthy of my love and respect. Not marrying someone so young. The list goes on and on.

But, you know, it's all of those things and more that got me to where I am today. So, no matter how often I wish I could go back and change one thing or another, I try and always remember that the ride is what got me here in the first place. And, I'm pretty happy overall now, so those lessons were well taken. I certainly have a long journey ahead of me, but I hope that in the end I'll look back at the main points and say that I did things my way and learned to be a better person because of it.