As Old As You Feel

I didn't really want to write about myself.

On your birthday, people tend to give you a free pass to do whatever you want. You want to eat nothing but cake all day? Do it! Hang out in your pjs watching "Mad Men?" It's your day!
Wait, this is actually sounding like a typical unemployed day for me. Let me begin again.

I didn't really want to write about myself. But the only people who read this blog are, presumably, people who like me, so they'll/you'll do me the service of allowing me my soapbox. Not that you have a choice; it's my blog, nyah nyah!

Did I mention I did not turn six today? Believe it or not, I'm twenty-three birthday wishes past that age. At least, chronologically. But I'll answer the question everyone likes to ask, "So, how do you feel being ___ years old now?" I'd like to answer a couple of ways.

I feel much younger than twenty-nine. I feel as though my whole life is ahead of me. I feel as though the thirties are the time I'm really going to come into my own, stylistically, vocationally, physically. In this way, being twenty-nine feels like an incredible blessing because I have made it this far and, God willing, have so much time left.

I also feel much, much older. I've a lot to be regretful about. Say that's silly or it isn't the cure for heartaches and friendships lost, that's fine. I've done things/been places/met people/neglected people such that I can't be proud. I think this regret has aged me prematurely. I feel the weight of a seventy-four year old woman whose memories of loved ones are tinged with a sincere wish that more care could have been given them. Bittersweet memories because love is still so strongly felt for them, yet they are now lost in time, distance, or mental state and can no longer be reached.

I feel like I grew up too fast and then, as a teenager, just wanted to be a child. Now I just wish I was an adult. I wish I looked like one. I wish more I acted like one.

This is all for naught if I don't mention who I think I should be in God's eyes. I know; the Proverbs 31 woman, right? She carries a weight, too, but at least she knows who she is. That's how I want to be.





This is what twenty-nine looks like for me.