….and so are my 20s

During the festive season, I turned 30.  Yup, now I’m a real grownup, I can’t get away with the stupid and irresponsible crap I once did, or so they tell me.

To be honest, I think turning 29 is much harder.  When you turn 29, the panic sets in; I was overwhelmed with a feeling of ohmygodionlyhaveoneyearleft!

Not only was I not where I thought I’d be at almost 30, I had yet to figure out where I thought I’d be at almost 30.  I was still single, in a one bedroom apartment, with my almost 10 year old cat, who was my most healthy and enduring relationship with a male.  It certainly didn’t help that people actually started with the old maid jokes, or that both my parents thought I was already 30 and I had to argue with them and prove it, which was made worse by the fact that there are not together, so they each made this assumption independently.  I was going to become one of those old spinster aunts who cooks for her cats and dresses funny.

But then I thought what if I wanted to be the crazy aunt? Did I? Then my life went all crazy and I had no more time to think about it, which in my case was probably a good thing.

And now here I am at 30, and while in some ways it feels like a whole year can’t possibly have passed since then, in others it feels like a lifetime has passed.

And I still have no idea what I want to be when I grow up.

So 2011 is over….

This year has been a big for me, and though I am fairly used to my life being a rollercoaster, this one was crazier than all the rest but one.

For starters, in 2010 I decided to make the shift from taking jobs for experience and to help figure out what I want to do when I grow up to finding THE job, the one I would stay at for more than my record 2 years, and I thought I had found it.  Then 2011 began.

Long story short, I lost that job at the beginning of the year due to the department being sold.  I then went through 2 more disastrous jobs before the year was out. My year of job stability turned into a year of instability, unemployment and more rejection that I have ever faced on the job market.

As you already know, I also added a 2^nd cat, a boyfriend and three young step kids into the mix.  Top it off with a stint in prison for my dad, and the more recent grandma with cancer, and I think that counts as a helluva challenging year by anyone’s standards.

I think that the hardest part, in all of this, was the fear.  I have a lifelong history of depression, anxiety, and past suicidal tendencies, and for the majority of the year, I have been scared as hell of falling back in.  With every challenge I would worry; “Is this the one that will send me over the edge?”  My boyfriend has been fantastic through all of this, but it is a fairly new relationship (though it is going at light speed compared to my past relationships) and there was also the lingering question of “will this be too much for him?”

To my surprise, the proverbial shoe never dropped, I stayed on this side of the depression cliff (though at times I was hanging on by my fingernails), the BF and I are not only still together, but still moving and growing, and our little every other weekend family is slowly but surely getting stronger.  I also started a job in mid-December that looks pretty promising.

So my big resolution this year (apart from the usual financial and weight goals) is different from past years where I have tried to be “more” something.  This year, I’m aiming for gratitude and contentment.  I want to live the life I have fully and truly appreciate what I have.