This is Thirty (and a half)

Today’s my half-birthday, which according to my brother is not a thing, but for a variety of reasons, we don’t listen to my brother. I started “observing” half-birthdays when I made my oldest (now eight) a half-circle cake when she turned 18 months old. And it kind of stuck. On the kids’ half birthdays they get to pick something fun to do, maybe we go on a field trip or to Disneyland or maybe it’s just a regular day and they get to pick what we have for dinner/dessert. It’s just one of those little things that makes me happy.

Which is something I think we all need a lot more of right now, given the uh… circumstances.

And since my actual birthday last year kind of just got dissolved into the drama of beginning my divorce and having to grapple with the unfairness of how much of the damage my ex did was just… on me to fix. I didn’t feel up to really celebrating and honestly spent most of my 30th birthday alone and crying (a fun repeat of my 22nd and 26th birthdays!). So I’ve kind of just… moved my birthday to… today.

The things I would have normally done on October 11th, like buying myself an entire gluten free cake from the bakery at Sprouts, making myself a pizza with actual pasteurized mozzarella cheese for dinner, making an extremely emo spotify playlist, and finally caving and ordering myself a nintendo switch because IF I CANT GO TO DISNEYLAND I AM GOING TO AT LEAST HAVE ANIMAL CROSSING TO KEEP ME COMPANY. Today is MY FUCKING DAY (it helps that my kids are with their dad this weekend).

And since, I have the time and mental space today, I just want to spend some time soaking in the gratitude I have for everything that’s happened in the past six months. All I’ve built, all I’ve learned, all I’ve let go of, and how much I really, truly have grown in such a short time.

The thing that’s sticking out to me the most today is how grateful I am to have gotten to test out that thing about how before you decide you’re depressed make sure you’re not surrounded by assholes thing.

Since I turned 30 I’ve certainly made a lot of progress as far as learning what my boundaries are, what toxic environments I need to remove myself from, and how I can be true to myself and live out my values without always being on the defensive. I’m not perfect at this, and certainly have a long way to go here.

BUT.

I can say that the internal shift that’s come with choosing to spend my time and energy on the relationships where I’m a “wealth of knowledge” rather than a “know it all”, “inspiring” instead of “annoying”, and “talented” instead of “weird”, where people say they’re proud of me or that I’ve made them think differently about something has been A TRIP. Because even though I know that so much of our mental health boils down to our own self talk, it’s really hard to practice that if you never hear it from the outside. And having that practice on the inside has helped me learn to turn that outward and show that same appreciation for others, that for me are the talented and inspiring wealths of knowledge that I’m proud of, and finally getting to be a part in a cycle of positivity and building up, rather than conflict and competition.

This is completely foreign after spending the majority of my teens and twenties trying to fit myself into groups where there just wasn’t a place for me, and then feeling bad about myself with then made me feel bad about the people who were already in those groups. And I love it.

And I think it’s really this new positive turn in the relationship I have with both myself and others, that has helped me to be so… ok (comparatively speaking) with living through a global crisis. A past version of myself would have spent these past couple weeks panicking and sobbing about how she had JUST managed to start earning enough money to keep the bills paid alone and now that’s gone for who knows how long and what if she can’t get that back. But the current version of myself knows that the fact that (with a lot of help) she could overcome the hurdles of her past and, in a matter of MONTHS, rebuild her life (really, build it up for the first time) after a decade of poverty and trauma to something somewhat stable, she can definitely do it again, probably better and faster because she’s got a new toolbox filled with all the lessons she learned going through it the first time.

I like this version of myself better.

I like thirty-and-a-half.