Closing a door

Hey, I'm 30.

No, for real. Not in the sense of how I've been answering "thirty" to casual queries about my age for the past two years. But in the sense of, thirty years ago today, at 8:06pm (Central), I was pulled screaming from a Pfannenstiel incision in my mother's abdomen at 35+3/7 weeks.

Hmm. I miss the days when I used to use phrases like "I was born."

Yeah, no I don't.

So the thing about it is...I'm surprisingly cool with turning 30. I feel like it's kind of a landmark, actually. And kind of analogous to pregnancy, in a weird, only-in-Kate's-head kind of way...life, I think, can more or less be divided into trimesters. For the first 30 years, you develop and change a lot. There's a lot of energy expended in this. You disrupt other peoples' lives a lot, and you're fairly demanding because you just need so much to pull off what you need to accomplish.

But then you cross into that second trimester. The transition itself is relatively subtle, but hitting that 12 week, er, 30 year mark is a pretty big milestone. Because if you've made it this far, you can't be too defective. You're reasonably well differentiated. The vomiting has usually stopped. Things calm down. Everyone relaxes a little. You refine your skills, you develop yourself, and you continue growing.

Eventually you hit the third trimester. At first, there's not a lot of difference. You still have quite a bit of growing to do, but, you've come a long, long way. But eventually, you just get more and more uncomfortable. You gradually become more burdensome to others again. And then one day, you hit a point when this state of being doesn't work anymore, and it's time to move on.

For the record, I may have come into this world preterm, but I fully intend on going postdates.

Yeah, I know, these things only seem profound to me...but, oh! It's my blog!

So, Tim McGraw may have said it better. That song's been in my head a lot over the past few days, for the obvious reasons, and I've been thinking a lot about my own Next Thirty Years...and, my previous thirty years.

And what a long, strange trip it's been.

I've been thinking a lot about myself on my previous "landmark" birthdays. Who I was at 16, at 18, at 21.

My mom called me in "sick" for my 16th birthday (actually, I think she called in and said, "I'm taking Kate for her driver's test today, she won't be in"). We went to the Sec State's office (the Illinois version of the DMV), and I dutifully turned on each blinker in succession, maintained a two-second space cushion between me and the car in front of me, and backed around a corner (I don't know why that's part of the road test). The examiner was looking for a reason to fail this clearly spoiled whippersnapper who had the audacity to skip school on her birthday. But, alas, I didn't give him one. I took an awkward picture on a red background and my mom and I went out to lunch.

Wow, what that guy didn't know.

I barely remember those years. I was so miserable. I was in this deep, obsidian abyss. That was the year I got sick - mono, EBV, somatization from a soul-sucking depression, we never did figure out what was wrong with me. I slept all the time and had a mildly elevated sed rate and some lymph nodes that lit up on a gadolinium scan. I missed a year and a half of high school before all was said and done. It was just as well. I hated being at school. I hated my life. I hated the very essence of myself. I was detached, chaotic, and fractured, and consumed with self-rejection and self-loathing. I was broken and distorted. I was floating somewhere between wanting to survive and being overwhelmed with the reality of being me, of who I was and what I'd been through. And it wasn't over yet. And I knew that.

Not exactly a high point in my existence.

The night before my 21st birthday, I went bowling with some of my sorority sisters (we were in a league. I had a three-digit handicap), and Lisa bought me my last illegal drink - a fuzzy navel - at, like, 11:55pm. Because I'd promised my dad he could buy me my first legal one. And he did - an amaretto stone sour at lunch the next day. Then I drove back to college and went out with my friends. We went to my favorite Mexican(-ish) place for dinner, then the over-21 among us went to a local bar I can't remember the name of. I had a margarita at dinner and three drinks at the bar. Robin was my designated driver that night. She had about an inch of her gin and tonic and was more buzzed than I was. Kate's roommate brought me a stick (to beat off the men in the bar, she said). It was a good night.

College was a rough time as well. There was a lot of internal conflict and a not insignificant bit of external conflict and I couldn't figure out for the life of me who I was or who I was supposed to be. I had three majors, and was president of five organizations my senior year. I fell in love with a really manipulative man and ended up in a bad relationship ("relationship") I couldn't quite extricate myself from. I wanted to be a doctor, but I got pulled into my advisors' offices on two separate occasions and got the "your GPA sucks ("sucks") and you're taking your MCATs too late (because I was having my gallbladder out the day I was supposed to take them the first time). You shouldn't even apply to medical school. Have you ever considered podiatry?"

I hate feet.

But then my MCAT scores came in, and they were all like, oh....huh. Well, that's okay then. And of course I got into medical school. But I distinctly remember driving home one night my senior year...it was a crisp, cold night and there was a full, bright moon over the cornfields and I had the sunroof open and the heat on...and thinking, God, I hate my life. But I knew the end was in sight. I don't think I'd been accepted to med school yet, but, I knew I was going to graduate at the end of the year, and then I'd be somewhere else, doing something else, away from the toxic, draining people I'd somehow accumulated. Not that everyone in my life was toxic - far from it. But it only takes a few. And I had a lot.

Medical school was better. I liked my life, I still hated myself. As it turned out, I had a lot of work left to do. I still hadn't figured out who I was. I had no idea what I wanted. Things shifted; some gave. My sense of self finally started to coalesce. I started to solidify.

And then I headed off to New Hampshire. Where they pushed me until I broke completely apart.

I spent the next two years underwater, fighting a number of currents that threatened to suck me back down, but, you know...sometimes you have to fall apart in order to put the pieces back together in the right order. And so I started this process, piece by piece.

Robin told me a couple of years ago, when I was sitting on a tiny chair in her first grade classroom sorting misplaced puzzle pieces, that my dislike of puzzles surprised her, because I was such a problem solver, and besides, the smart kids always like puzzles. I have no patience for anything with more than, like, 5o pieces. I think it's because I spend so much time examining my own patterns, trying to find what fits where. I have enough almosts and not-quites; I just can't handle tiny little pieces of die-cut cardboard that somehow become a picture of kittens.

They're still not all back together. There are still a number of shards that don't seem to fit right and sometimes they slip or have to be re-broken and sometimes I get just so frustrated. But sometimes they set right in. More often, I have glue all over my fingers and slice myself open trying to put things in order. Either way, I keep working. And every day, I get a little closer to wholeness.

So, in my next thirty years...I'm going to keep going. I'm going to strive for authenticity, for excellence, for integration, balance, acceptance, and temperance. I'm going to let the pieces fit where they may and receive whatever form that turns out to be. I'm going to pay more attention to where I am instead of where I'm trying to go. I'm going to conclude that first trimester, acknowledge everything I accomplished - which is a lot -and move forward to what has yet to be.

Acceptance. That's going to be a big task, I think. Accepting myself. Accepting what comes. Accepting what is, whatever that is.

And I think I might get another tattoo...