Something about turning 35 didn’t sit right. In the weeks leading up to my birthday I wrestled with feelings of getting older, feeling older, and realizing that I would soon be closer to 40 than 30. For the record, I don’t think 40 is old and that is not what this is about.

For the first time in my life I had a weird feeling about hitting the next number. I hadn’t felt that before. I’ve always felt like your age is just a part of you, in no way does it define you, and so it’s never bothered me – I’ve certainly never had negative feelings about the number on my cake.

I was excited to turn 30! EXCITED!

Why wasn’t I excited to turn 35?

Maybe it’s because there I sensed it wasn’t going to be much fun being 35.

The day of my birthday I forgot my tea on the counter (my fault for drinking tea 😉 ) and left my keys in the lock in the front door. I almost drove away with them IN THE DOOR! Too bad I didn’t realize my tea was on the counter until I was almost on the highway and it was too late. Since then I have forgot my coffee more often than remembered it. Oops. At least I haven’t left the keys in the door again.

I spent most of the last month sick or taking care of a sick kid. We were doing SO good this winter and then the house turned into a germ-factory and it’s been one sickness after another since. I know I’ve been sick the most, thanks 35 year old immune system!

Between sick days and snow days it feels like I haven’t even been at work. I have, just mostly at home. Having the flexibility to work from home is a bonus when these crazy times hit, but it doesn’t make it easier to get work done. Most of the days were harder than they were easier. It was a busy month running between offices and that didn’t help. I didn’t feel grounded. I didn’t feel in control. I have breathed and talked myself out of more than one potential panic attack. I was losing control of work and home. Why wouldn’t those damn germs just die? If they would die and I was healthy again I would regain control!

Instead I could feel that I needed a break because I was breaking. I finally took a break and crashed. Thanks to a migraine I slept for an entire day! Nothing makes you take a break like a migraine. Then I got sick again and then my car went haywire on the highway. Being stranded on the side of the road was a perfectly awful way to end the month and a perfect metaphor for the month. The car had been making a noise and I said I needed to take it to the mechanic and had planned to call that day, but I pushed away the warning signs and boy did that bite me on the ass!

I had a bit of a chuckle on the side of the road when I realized the similarities between me and my car. The chuckle may have sounded more like sobs to someone else, but there was a chuckle in the somewhere…

 

So I think my negative feelings towards turning 35 was more of a sense of what was coming. It was a shitty month. A lot went wrong. I was a wreck emotionally and physically. It seemed like nothing could go right and I was stuck in such a negative place it felt impossible to see the light. It would be so easy to only focus on those things but now that I’ve come out of it rather unscathed, albeit with a lighter wallet, I feel ok about it all. Not great, but ok. Every moment I felt like I couldn’t go on, I somehow did. I didn’t always find the light, but sometimes it found me. And now that I reflect back on the month there are so many more positive things that come to memory. And that is how I keep going.

It turns out maybe I’m not the pessimist I always thought I was.
Or maybe the mindfulness training is paying off!