Wednesday, April 7, 2010

Thirty

This year I will be thirty.
I do not care about the actual age.
I do not feel old in most ways.
I do not feel like thirty is the end like some people may.

But there is this weird feeling down deep.
A bit of sadness.
Not for losing my youth.
For losing the life I thought I would had by now.
For losing the plans I had set into action.
For doing things the right way but yet still feeling like I failed.
So a bit of sadness mixed with a bit of personal failure.

I used to say I did not want to be thirty and divorced.
I accomplished that I suppose.
I guess I should have said I did not want to be thirty, divorced and/or widowed.
I would have been fine to have been single till thirty.
Not this.
Not this at all.

I feel like I did not meet my own goals.
I am still in school.
I do not have a bachelors, only an associates.
I am in the middle of a major career change.
I am (mostly) single, at least in the IRS definition.
I have not been out of the country in so long.
(The islands of the Bahamas do not count when I live ninety miles away).
The website Roger was helping me with two years ago is still sitting on the old computer.
My photography is still very amateur.

The last few days I have been in a bit of a funk.
With a slight depression coming on.
I feel like I am being left behind in the life train.
Yesterday I was speaking to a good friend who is also a widow when she commanded me to be kind to myself.
She told me to look at all the things I have accomplished.
It is just so hard right now.
It is so hard to look beyond the big gaping hole.

4 comments:

Janine said...

Hugs, Star.
I get it.
You're in my thoughts.

Supa Dupa Fresh said...

Sugar, I'm going through a bunch of the same thing, only at 43, and I have a kid and I happen to be married. Those could be good things, unless you're in my frame of mind... then they're sort of anti-accomplishments.
Something about spring. Yuck.
I'd give you a big hug and some special chocolate if I were there.
Hugs!
Supa

Candice said...

At the time, I was happy to finally be turning 30, which happened 2 years and a few months after Charley died. I couldn't wait to have my 20s behind me, since they hadn't turned out so hot (minor understatement). It was a relief to be 30, in a new "decade" for me, and it was a comfort to think that there was no way in hell that the next 10 years could be worse than what I'd just survived.

(In hindsight, the relieved, hopeful optimism seems horribly naive...because it turns out the last 3 years since I turned 30 have still been horrid. Woohoo...[and yes, insert heavy sarcasm].)

It was 32 when I hit all the feelings you described here. It wasn't the age at all; it was that I was distraught over where my life had gone, that everything I'd work and hoped for was gone. (Here's what I wrote then about it.)

So I get it too. Unfortunately. I'm so sorry you've been having a harder time lately. Sending you many, many hugs....

Jennifer M Karn said...

I can't tell you how many times I boasted about being married so long (against bad odds) and having only one father to my four kids and not being a single mother. I have a bachelor's, I've been a professional photographer, and I've traveled...I did it all as a married woman. Now, I face new challenges...as a widow. I feel like I've, too, failed somehow. Failed as a wife and mother. I can't believe at 36 I'm single. I can't believe it.

I love your pictures. I think they're great. You have flair. Keep it up.

Jennifer