dirty thirty.

It's funny how the sum of all of the little details of your life affect your outlook on the big traditional landmarks. Last Saturday was my 30th birthday. It passed with a surprisingly small amount of fanfare, and with none of the angst and depression expected. Not a lick. A few days beforehand, a close friend emailed to inquire about my mental state. She noted that "I always make the best of everything." This is interesting, because I've never really seen myself as an upbeat or overly positive person. In my own head I am too often a depressingly realistic, angsty, glass-half-empty sort of girl. Yet for some reason not too many people believe me. On a plane several years ago (back when I was still CERTAIN that writing would be a significant part of any future career), the nice gentleman sitting beside me pronounced, after a couple hours of chatting, that I was "not screwed up enough to be a writer."

I wonder why I was offended by that assertion, and why for some reason my friend's statement didn't land in the synaptic web of my brain as the generous compliment she had intended. Maybe some part of me fears that with contentedness and stability comes a loss of creativity, excitement, drama, etc. I like to think that I come across as a more positive person than I really am when I communicate with my friends, that it's my way of shielding myself from judgment. After all, if I'm bouncy and upbeat about my job, my future, my finances, my appearance...it doesn't really leave many windows of opportunity for criticism, to my face or otherwise. "Well, yeah, she's making a lot less money than if she'd bucked up and gone into practice, but she's so happy that it's obviously worth it."

So what does ANY of that have to do with my 30th birthday? I figured that out when I sat down to reply to my friend's email. I wrote...well, I wrote the following, which I will post in it's entirety, since said friend said afterward that I should do so:

It's weird, because I've been dreading turning 30...pretty much ever since we graduated from college, when I still believed that there was some social "rule" of sorts which dictated that by 30 I needed to own my own home, be either in my dream job or getting close to it, have a great marriage with an impossibly perfect guy, and maybe even have a kid or two. I'm pretty much over THAT, but I gotta say, if I were where I was two years ago, I'd be depressed as hell. So I guess now it feels like...well, I haven't knocked it out of the park when it comes to the things I wanted to have or have done by 30, but I've also come a hell of a long way in just two short years. I'll be turning 30 in a career field that I've discovered I LOVE, even if it is on the beginning end. I won't be living in my own home surrounded by nice things, but at least I'm living a completely self-sufficient life with a hell of a lot less (quickly dwindling) debt than most people in my position, and amazing job benefits to boot. I'm not married with kids, but after what feels like a lifetime of trying out males who were never going to truly respect me or provide what I needed, I've formed a stable, long-term and possibly lifelong relationship with someone who is real and fallible, but who makes me laugh, and thinks I'm worth fighting for, and makes me feel genuinely happy and safe. And of course, to top it all off, I have seriously amazing friendships that have been strong enough to endure distance and adulthood and time. It could be a lot worse, right?

So I performed what was essentially the keyboard equivalent of "scribbling" all of that down. And hit send. And walked away. And then I remembered that one little bit from the Royal Tenenbaums, where Royal says something uncharacteristically heartfelt and then the narrator intones: "Immediately after saying it, Royal realized that it was true."

And if it's true, then...well, crap. Maybe I AM a positive upbeat person after all.