Somehow, the holiday season has crept up on me.
It helps that I escaped to New Orleans, steeping myself in history, southern charm, and more food and rum than I should indulge in during a single week. I feel like I discovered the place, that it is in some special way mine and that it always will be. My secret escape. I tend to feel this way about all new places. I fall in love easily. This is how I end up moving from one coast to the other, from the north to the south.
Thanksgiving is within days. Christmas is a mere month after that. In between is a smattering of birthdays -- mostly those people who are among the very most important in my life. It's sheer chaos, followed by a rollicking New Year. And before I can remember to write 2011 instead of 2010, it's my birthday.
I will be 34.
The birthday blues come sooner for me with every passing year. I'm already in the thick of them.
At 34, I have not yet:
...written a book. But I am up to page 100.
...thin. Though I have lost 50 lbs.
...married. But I am living with someone wonderful.
...a homeowner. Though a psychic assures me I will be.
...a mother. But that's just less weight I need to lose? I am running out of time. (Yes, there's the using someone else's eggs and the fertility treatments and blah blah blah.)
This list is slightly more comforting than last year's, as it includes progress on most fronts. However, in the depths of my staring down the barrel of old age - or at least, middle age - unmarried and childless, that is cold comfort.
Sometimes, I wish I'd been a summer baby. But then, maybe that would only be spreading the misery out. All sorts of people get holiday blues, even if their birthdays aren't stuck to the end of them. Maybe I would just be making this list twice a year instead of the once that's bad enough.
A psychic assured me of all sorts of good things while I was in NOLA. But that's for another post.
