30/40: Day 1
It’s April. April has always been my favorite month because that is the month that belongs to me. I was born in April 1982 and on the 26th of this month, I will have stayed alive for 40 rotations around the sun.
Aging has always been difficult for me. I’m still wrapping my head around why I struggle with aging but I’m gonna go ahead and guess it has to do with trauma and arrested development.
I remember turning 10. Wow, two digits! I remember turning 13. I’m a teenager! I remember turning 16. “Sweet 16”; hoped the romantic overtures would flood my locker space. I remember turning 18. I was a legal adult now! I remember turning 20. I’m officially not a teen anymore. I remember turning 21. Now I could drink alcohol. I remember turning 22, thinking, what other coming of age moments do I have to look forward to at this point? It was kind of depressing. Because after that, the next ages I remember turning was 26, which was my golden birthday. Something I’d been looking forward to for a long time. I even had a birthday based on childhood. I remembered turning 30 because I never ever imagined myself inhabiting a 30 year old mind or body. Since 30 it’s been a blur of time moving forward and profound imposter syndrome.
And so I have been low key ruminating the last couple years about this upcoming number. 40. I never thought I’d be in the 40 group. That’s old. I also hated the 7th graders when I was a 6th grader, but then didn’t seem to hate 7th graders when I was a 7th grader. Something about tribes, isn’t it? As children, we tribe with each other because we have the confusion of being children to parents in common. We are powerless so we huddle and mumble, don’t let the bastard get you down. My allies were children; but as I grew, other children seemed to become adults but I just seemed to pretend that I wasn’t actually having a meltdown inside.
Oh, hey, I can’t help but also mention that we’ve been socialized to disregard the bodies of women over 40. And me pointing to culture with a blaming finger isn’t inaccurate, but it is a distraction from the truth that I am an adult now and have a choice about how I want to see myself. I am only just getting to know myself, so I’m not sure quite how to do all of this. So it’s just experimentation, kindness, forgiveness, and unmasking shadows going forward which leads to…
Deciding to do a 30 Days of 40 Years celebration. Every day of the month of April, I have reserved time for something special and sweet for myself. How did I decide on those things? I sat on my butt holding a pen and paper and just stared at a tree until I thought of 30 things that, when fantasizing about doing them, legitimately made me feel a happy energy in my body. If instead of a happy energy I felt a kind of selfish pride, like, “I like the idea of how other people would see me if I were to do this”, then I had to be honest and not write it down.
That all said, here are a few of the things I wrote down: spend an entire day sitting by the river and journaling, visit with mom, visit with dad, take a bellydancing class, go to a concert, go to Kinky Friday, make art out of the Bible, go on a date with Adam, go to SeaQuest, go hiking, take a drumming class, invite my friends to a Zumba Birthday, spend an entire day reading, go on a date with someone new, watch both the sunrise and the sunset.
Last night I went to Kinky Fridays at the Gay 90’s with my friends Josh and Nathan. It was my first day of my 30/40 adventure. It was so unusual of me. I hadn’t seen Josh in years and I barely knew Nathan. But I invited a few people I felt comfortable with and just did it. I don’t typically go do things in the evening. I’m quite the homebody at the moment. But some of my dreams require me to stay up late. Josh and I carpooled and grabbed coffee with Nathan first. I was buzzed with energy and enjoying the new people around me. My circle has been so small for so long. I felt awkward with myself for acting however it was that I was because I am still getting to know myself. Sometimes I’m just pure synapses talking about themselves. Other times, I’m more composed and filtered. Yesterday was a bubbly synapse waterfall. It felt really vulnerable and I still haven’t fully processed my feelings about that. But my guess is that it has to do with lessons I learned early on about how to be a good kid and an attractive female. All the TV I was watching told me that to be good, you are restrained, ordered, conversationally balanced, measured tone, thoughtful unfolding of language, proper posture, subtle facial cues. Like I said, I was a synapse waterfall.
I don’t really nor haven’t really ever gone to bars or to clubs. It’s not because I overtly judge that lifestyle or scene. But it just sounds awful to my brain. I’ve tried a number of times. The only times I enjoy myself is when I’m impacted by alcohol or something else. It’s just a very loud experience to a mind that is very vigilant about sorting through its senses and experiences. So the whole experience is 100% new to me already at that level. Plus, I have some kind of weird thing about being the weird, undesired “old” person in a young person’s crowd. I remember how media made adults who hung out with younger people look in the eyes of the younger people. But again, me pointing my finger distracts from me being an adult and needing to own my values around why I deserve to be in that space as much as anyone else.
I was already very overstimulated, then had to stand the whole time and watch, for the first time [for me] people have sex in public.
Until I wrote that out in a text to my partner this afternoon, I hadn’t fully understood why the experience felt so uncomfortable in some way but absolutely normal and human in another way. Intellectually, my values are MUCH different than they were when I was a teenager or even in my 20s when I was still pretty homophobic. So I’m stoked my intellect is caught up, but the coding in my brains automatic responses are not. And so I heard all kinds of very old messages about what it means to be here, to watch this. My mind started to split into 6 different realities that it was tracking. The reality of feeling unnerved in a large, compressed crowd. The reality of being a little on guard hanging with friends I don’t know terribly well. The reality of feeling like “you’re going to get in trouble” as an undercurrent. The reality of feeling humiliated that normal human sexuality has been overridden with shame in my brain (as of now). The reality of feeling like an imposter and that everyone here is 100% comfortable and if they knew how clueless I was they’d laugh me out of the room.
But eventually, Josh tapped my shoulder saying he was going to step outside, which was exactly what I had been thinking at that point, too. Stepping away was exactly what I needed. I stepped outside for a bit and we talked and realized that both of us were kind of spent. We lost Nathan in the chaos so we just ended up leaving and chatting by a lake for the rest of the night, both of us processing our experiences.
And that, my friend, was Day 1 of 30/40. A mixed experience at Kinky Friday’s. Tonight, the plan is to go to a drumming circle in Minneapolis. I have no energy to get up at do it, but it’s not super organic. Meaning, it’s a legit “lazy” energy versus “hey, this rest is exaaaactly what we need; skip that thing guilt-free”. So in this instance, I’m gonna pick up my butt and get going to this drum thing. I already am nervous. Will it be a small group? Will they make too much eye contact with me? Will I feel safe enough to just zone out once we’re playing? Are there going to be old white dudes who won’t leave me alone and have to tell me all about their experiences with drumming while I secretly hate myself for controlling my face to look as pleasant as possible? Probably.
