F%ck You, Forty

I haven’t been this excited, since I was twenty, to add another year to my life. Turning forty was more or less a giant dumpster fire for me, punctuated by moments of an extinguished flame.

Like new year’s eve, the emphasis placed on celebrating a milestone is a set up for disappointment. Feeling a rumbling of anxiety building in me like a simmering pot of water, I’d desperately wanted to hide under a rock on my birthday, only to emerge after there was no reason to celebrate me and my aging self. Or, worst I case, I would have celebrated on a volcanic rock on a kid-less trek to Hawaii.

Instead, Andy threw me a party and, as I cringed my way through the attention, I thought to myself, "Don’t let this year get the best of you. You just need a restart." Yet, over the months, no matter how many times I went to bed, filled with hope that the next day would be the restart day, I woke up feeling like Bill Murray on ground hog day.

I tried, like Bill, to do things to change the outcome of the future. I stopped running on a bruised and broken body, I started going back to therapy, I accepted a new job, Andy and I took our first vacation without kids. I started meditating and tested out some medication that I’d resisted trying for at least decade. I cut out caffeine and wine. But, none of it reset my life in the way I expected and, like our bud Bill, I started thinking that throwing a toaster in the bathtub was going to be the only way to stop the cycle.

Turning forty released forty skeletons from my closet and they danced all over my life for the last twelve months. They trampled on what I thought I’d become and reminded me that all that was between me and my fears, insecurities, and shortcomings was just a door.

It’s sucked and it’s been hard. I’ve been angry and tired and caught in a cycle of grief over how quickly time has passed and how I’ll never be the person I used to be. We change, but it’s not always in ways we want to.

Yeah. F%uck you, forty.

Ten years ago I was focused on accomplishment and gaining all the things a successful social media profile boasts to its envious followers. At forty, I don’t care about any of that anymore. Or, I’m learning that if I continue caring about all of that, my life will be ground hog day in perpetuity.

I’ve also learned that there’s no such thing as a reset button. There’s no magical method to remove the skeletons from the closet. I can’t be someone else just because I’m tired of being myself.

In my forty first year, my gift to myself (is not a trip to Hawaii, too bad) is to dance with the skeletons and to fight less with my expectations for what my life should be like.

*I have had MANY people help me navigate my dumpster fire year without judgement or expectations of me returning the favor. From my first boss to former interns and former colleagues, not to mention my mom, my cousin, Handy Andy, my own children and so many members of my mom-friend crew, all I can say is thank, thank, thank you.