Life at 30

So, last year I celebrated my last official birthday. You see, I’ll now be 29 forever even though my 30th birthday is tomorrow. If I don’t celebrate it, then it’s just another day, right?

I don’t feel 30. I look back at old pictures from elementary school or homecoming in highschool or college graduation and it all seems so fresh in my mind. I have memories that transport me back and then I have this realization that they’re from 20 years ago (and I don’t look like that anymore…unfortunately).

I was looking at a picture of a friend on Facebook that recently got remarried. He and I were very good friends in middle school and have halfway kept in touch all of these years. He started dating another one of my friends in middle school and they got married after college. Then they divorced sometime during the years we lost touch in our mid-twenties. Looking at the picture of him and his new wife felt like I was looking at a picture of a person with 2 heads—it just didn’t seem quite right. I still feel like we’re in middle school and to see him with someone new is just strange. It makes me wonder how people view me. When they look at pictures of me now, do they still see that girl from elementary, middle school, highschool or college rather than who I am now (not that the “me” from back then was bad)?

I confirm a friend on Facebook and I look at the pictures of them and their children and I think to myself “Wow, that’s scary…she’s got children?!” Then it hits me….hello! We’re ADULTS now…all grown up…wiser….kinder….less rough around the edges….hopefully more responsible. We’re no longer the next generation—our kids are now.

I’ve been thinking a lot about where I had always pictured myself at age 30. I wonder if people look at my “profile” on Facebook and think I am a failure because of the expectations they had for me “back then.” I was the Valedictorian who was on her way to medical school where she’d use her intellect and drive to make great strides in Cardiothoracic Surgery (yes, I looked back at my senior yearbook). Instead, I got married, never went to medical school and now I’m in my second marriage and I work for a nonprofit for let’s just say, about 1/12 the salary of a Cardiothoracic Surgeon.

Or do they look at those pictures and see that I am finally married to the man that I am madly, deeply in love with? And that I have a beautiful, feisty, spunky little girl who I love more and more each day? And that I am blessed to have a good job during these tough economic times so that we can live a comfortable life and enjoy fun times and make lasting memories? And that we’re striving to learn how to welcome more children into our lives by giving them a loving, stable home? And that I am happy and content and at peace…FINALLY? I guess 30’s not so bad after all…