Live Metanoia

I really thought when I was younger that by the time I was 25 I would live in my own home, married with a husband, and with at least one child if not two. Because that’s the dream we are sold to believe in being a female and living in the south. Then I started to get older. I went off to college and didn’t really date around. I ran to church services and got involved with organizations instead. I doubled my school load and graduated with three degrees in three years and got a dog.

I didn’t party because I didn’t like to drink, and I didn’t date, due to the hookup culture of college and not liking frivolous relationships. Then I graduated and was thrusted into the real world with no idea what I was doing and I stumbled along for four or five years until I landed, unsteadily, where I am now.

I still don’t drink much, only for rare occasions. I still haven’t experienced what it’s like to be intoxicated, not that that is on my list of things to do. I still have only dated sparingly, not being in an actual relationship since my early college days.

 The middle school and high school versions of me are having a panic attack right about now.

I am 30. Unmarried, childless, and living in an apartment with an upstairs neighbor who has concrete feet and two hellspawn children. I am 30, living away from my friends and family who I try to see as much as I can but still feel left out of their lives most of the time. I have two nephews and a niece I worry will never know the joy of having an Aunt that cares for them fiercely and loves them even though I don’t always show it and I’m never around. I think about when they get older and having nothing in common with me other than being blood and distance is more of a comfort to them than hanging with me. I am 30, forcing myself to make new friends and trying to get out and do more by myself because that’s all that I have. Going on shitty dates, because for some reason everyone has stopped trying in relationships, and gaining more weight as we speak because my body is refusing to heal from a surgery I had in June. I am 30 with raw skin and blisters due to allergic reactions to medical tape and sore knees and back because I haven’t been able to move, or stretch, or run in five months.

I am 30 and I am tired of being tired. I am tired of self-pity and doubt. I am tired of anxiety.

I want to dance, and play pool, and swim. I want to hike, and skydive, and travel. I want to go to the themed bars in Houston and enjoy the shows and go to the museums and concerts and go bowling. I want to live and love and have exhausting amounts of joy.

I am 30 and over it. I am over the pity party and the tiredness and the frustration and anger. I am over the politics and media and fear mongering and how everyone thinks they are entitled to shout their uninformed, uneducated opinions about everything going on and about others’ lives. I am over the excuses for bad health that I have made and others make as well because they have refused to change but continue to complain. I am over it.

I am constantly seeking something. What I am not sure. Change? Healing? Revelation? Chocolate? I don’t know. I wonder about what my younger selves would think. I wonder what my future self is going to think. Am I wasting time? Am I being short sighted? Should I sell everything, pack what’s left off, and move to Montana or Utah? Ugh, that sounds like a lot of work.

I don’t know why I feel like I am stuck in a waiting period. It’s probably due to the fact I am still struggling with medical BS which I don’t have answers to and don’t understand why. Is this atonement? Punishment? A fork in the road of my life? If so, am I going in the right direction?

There’s so much I want to do and experience and I feel like time is slipping through my fingers. Maybe it’s the season we are in. Not the metaphorical one, but the literal one. Where the sun sets at like 4:30 in the afternoon and its perpetually dark and cold and you feel like you have to be indoors. Or maybe it is the metaphorical one as well, where everyone around me is moving on to different chapters in their lives, having babies, having more babies, going on trips and cruises with their significant others, girl’s trips, etc.  

I don’t know.

I am 30 and I don’t know, and I am restless, and anxious, and frustrated, and hanging on by a thread.

I am 30 and I am at the same time hopeful, and joyful, and exuberant, and hungry for life.

I am 30 and even when I am filled with worry, or doubt, or happiness, or whatever feelings I still move on through life, sometimes stumbling, sometimes sprinting.

I will always put my head down, dig my heels in the dirt, and power through. That’s how I was raised and it’s ingrained in my body and soul, but man am I tired.

I am 30 and I am still figuring it out.

And that’s the ticket, ladies and gentlemen.

We are all still figuring it out.

At 30.

Or 42.

Or 56.

Or 79.

There’s no playbook for life. There are no boxes to check or accomplish or a ‘set time’. My life is not like yours, or my brothers, or the neighbors. We are all different, not running the same race, but maybe in the same National Park- sometimes running by each other, other times hiking a trail on our own, and for some running away from angry bears.

I am 30, well as I write this, 30 and 10 days and some hours and minutes, and I am trying.

My Journey continues,

Kaycee