single spaced: Thoughts on Being 30.

My 30th birthday finally having passed, I've steadily been thinking about what it means to be an adult, and how to grow up without growing old and boring. A couple of random, scattered thoughts on this one.

1. I have moments just like this every once in a while, where I come to the stark realization that we are the adults and have two small children counting on us to keep it together and know everything and provide. I mean, usually the thought isn't so grave and scary, and I'm more surprised by the fact that I can't really call myself a "young parent" anymore, where I realize I'm getting further and further away from my young, single days.

And then there are times where I go back over the past five years and am genuinely taken aback by the turns my life has taken. Growing up, I was never the kind of girl who dreamed about her wedding day. My dad and I had an awful relationship and the thought of having to eventually let him meet my significant other and be at my wedding scared and sickened me. I didn't want him walking me down the aisle, I didn't want a last dance, I didn't want him to witness the kiss or first dance or any of the corny wedding traditions like the garter toss. Thinking of all that made me sick to my stomach. When my parents split and our relationship dissolved, I finally felt free to live my life, but after a string of bad (not just failed) relationships, marriage and kids were off the table. I didn't think I'd ever meet a guy I'd want to stick it out with. So sometimes I'm stil genuinely surprised it happened the way it did, as early as it did. And I feel really thankful and lucky.

2. I've been thinking about both the ways I have improved my life and where I have more room for improvement. For a multitude of reasons, throughout high school and my early 20's, I was a really jealous girl. I don't think it's a terribly unusual trait for a young woman to have, but comparing myself to others has always been an unfortunate struggle for me, and that issue reached its pinnacle in early motherhood, for about the first year of Hugga's life. I constantly sized myself up against other moms -- did I have a better career, was I better at breastfeeding, was I a better wife, did I lose the weight faster? It simply wasn't enough for me to keep up -- I had to do everything better. I'd spend all this energy trying to be better than the next, then feel resentful that nobody it.

I took a good look at the things in my life I needed to be grateful for. I had a great family and a great husband. I had a good career and we had enough money to get by comfortably. I had a great support system. And I also took an honest look at the things in my life that made me unhappy -- living back in my hometown, I felt like I wasn't doing anything interesting with my life. I felt like I was basing a lot of my daily decisions on what my extended family and friends (cousins, aunts, uncles, my mom) were doing, what they expected of me, and I got resentful when I felt they weren't doing the same for me. The family dynamic is where I got a lot of my hang-ups about comparing myself to others and constantly feeling judged and for who I was or wasn't.

Moving to California was a a big part of calibrating my happiness levels -- I get along much better with my family when I'm not stewing in my hometown for too long -- but I still occasionally struggle with comparing myself to others, being judgmental, and allowing people who are wildly different from me into my life. The latter is probably the hardest thing for me. I've mentioned this before, but I disagree with my family the most on a political level, and while I'm sure I was a smug asshat about it in high school, in the past decade I've constantly been cornered into arguments I didn't want to be part of. And my opinions have mostly been dismissed because I was supposedly young and stupid and didn't know any better. The worst was when my uncle once got into a screaming match with me in a car in front of my kid.

I don't think I've fully gotten over that, and as such, I tend to avoid befriending people who don't share my views on certain things. This has more to do with my own confidence in being able to speak up for myself and stand my own ground while still being respectful of others (since when other people did this in front of me, they added that I was wrong/wrongheaded/dumb and didn't always respect my?opinion), but I still can't help feeling a little judgmental when I decide to keep a person at arm's length because of political disagreements. I know this is something I can improve on by practicing speaking for myself in a respectful way, but I've rarely seen people do this in real life.

3. A few other small things, I guess. There are still weird fragments of childhood I carry around with me that I think about from time to time, and I'm still not sure how they fit into my bigger story.

One thing in particular popped up in recent weeks when Huz and I were talking about how I used to be really jealous. A couple of years ago, right before we moved away from CT, we went to a lounge for my younger cousin's birthday. I have no recollection of this, but Huz apparently remembers that I was annoyingly possessive that night because I had beef with the bartender.

The story with the bartender? She was a childhood friend of one of my cousins. I remember an eighth grade graduation dinner we had for my cousin (I was in sixth grade), which the bartender attended, and she wanted to get in kahoots with my other older cousin who was popular at his high school. As I was the little cousin everyone picked on, I remember she spent the entire dinner bullying me to impress my family. She was a stranger to me and it was brutal. I had no one sticking up for me and I couldn't stick up for myself. I have astonishingly few memories of my childhood, but that's one I remember absolutely vividly. And when I was told she was in charge of the bar that night, I spent the whole night fearful and insecure, and things hadn't changed -- it may have just been my own messed up perception, but I remember her still being a complete bitch to me that night.

It honestly kind of hurt when Huz reminded me of this, and it hurt me to realize I had showed myself in a way he thought was annoying and possessive. I felt like I gave her too much power again. I'm still not sure what to do with this thought, but I haven't been able to let it go quite yet.

Results are inconclusive right now. Life is a learning process and I guess someday it'll all make sense.

Source: http://www.singlespaced.com/2012/11/thoughts-on-being-30.html

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