You’re Only As Old As You Feel

So Monday was my birthday. I have begun to get to the point where I start to dread my birthday, and I get depressed almost every year as it approaches. Mostly because everyone forgets. Or it feels like everyone forgets. The digital age has made everything rather impersonal. I can log onto Facebook, and I can wish a friend happy birthday on their wall, and avoid calling them on the phone and risking an actual conversation that I would have to take part in. I would not even need to remember their birthday. Facebook will remind me, so long as this friend has allowed their birth date to be shown on their profile.

This year, my good friend Armaina stopped by and hung out with me. She even picked up a cake, which was downright awesome of her. Red velvet cake, with whipped frosting, and white chocolate shavings on the cake. Oh yes, she knows me rather well. I was going to go out to dinner with my brother and his family, but transportation difficulties made that plan fall through. Oh well, I suppose we’ll do a rain check.

I started this post, thinking that people always say that you are only as old as you feel. Well damnit, I feel old. I may only be 27 now, but thanks to my mental problems and being a mother of four children, I feel older than I am. I feel restless, like I should be doing something with my life, something productive, and I think a lot of these feelings are because I am looking at my children grow up, go to school, and now I am home all day, cleaning the same rooms over and over. I felt a similar panic about 2 years ago around my birthday, and as a result, I enrolled into college that following winter. Now I have my Associate’s degree, and yet I still cannot find a job. Now I have student loans to pay and only a piece of paper that is looking more and more worthless by the day to show for it. Perhaps if I had a job, I wouldn’t feel so worthless but I still don’t know what to do about this feeling besides continue to fill out job applications.

I suppose if my life expectancy was only 60, I could blame this all on a midlife crisis…

A Decade of Experience

I have been sitting here, attempting to write a blog about the last ten years of marriage. I have started typing several different times, gotten distracted, then I come back and reread what I have written and delete it. Nothing seems to be coming out right, and I don’t know if it’s because I am alone on my anniversary, or the fact that I have only slept about two or three hours. Perhaps I should attempt this later when I can focus…

Update: Okay, now that I am a bit more focused, I shall try this again. I just celebrated my ten year anniversary. Normally, it’s a nice quiet day, but HOLY SHIT, I’ve been married for a decade. I sort of felt like this sort of anniversary would require some bells, maybe fireworks. Something to make the day feel special. Unfortunately, I spent my anniversary without my husband, which is the third year in ten years that this has happened. One time, he was gone for training, another year, he was deployed, and this year, training again. I am mostly just grateful he has only been gone for three of them so far, as it could have been much worse. My plan to surprise my husband was going to be to organize the garage, which I didn’t do. It’s okay though, I’ll probably get that done as soon as it cools off outside.

Those of you that know me, and those of you who can do the math will realize that I have been married since I was 16. Statistically, most teen parents don’t last very long, and I’ll admit, it has not been a bundle of happiness and joy the entire time. We, just like everyone else, have had good days and bad days, and hell sometimes we have a bad month. There were times during the first year that I wanted to give up, but I was determined to work through our differences. I reminded myself that there was a specific reason that I married him, and that was that I loved him, dearly. There are times that I look at him and I am reminded of that boy that I fell in love with 12 years ago. We have been through so much together, and I look forward to the next decade together.
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