Much to my dismay I was recently reminded about that impending 30 something birthday... the one I really haven't been looking forward to & alas, was forced (yet again) to confront that I'm no longer 29. It didn't help that my almost 20 year old sisters still thought I was 29 & were in a state of enduring disbelief (despite the fact we rather raucously celebrated this only last November). It was difficult to inform them that I'm really NOT & never to be again!
But as you know, when you're all of almost 20, 30 seems like it will take forever & a day. It is a virtual aeon away, & a hefty chunk of a lifetime in which one plans to grow up - although I've often wondered, does this ever really happen or do we just figure its all down hill once the grey hairs start sprouting & assume a sort of roll-me-over-at-bedtime type position.
When I was sixteen, Eternity was not just the name of my favorite parfum (though it did truly smell like cat piss on me), it also measured the divide between me & the then dreaded 30. My twenties really were an endless state of much love to be made & laughs to be had. I haphazardly founded my twenties on the belief that 30 was just another number but mostly because it was one that was never going to happen to me. For all I knew by the time that ol' blue moon rolled around the collective I would have discovered the whereabouts of that hallowed fountain & yes - when I was 13 & optimism was in fashion, I actually thought this might be the case. Well, as November looms I feel obliged to reaffirm that 31 is still just a number. I haven't quite found that wellspring of eternal girlhood but I can relish in the fact that had I been a cave woman long dead from her staple diet of charred saber tooth & melted ice I certainly would not be celebrating my next birthday doused in tequila & dancing barefoot on the beach. Bliss.
