My third decade is almost a year old. Last November when I entered it, I was happy to be leaving my 20s, as my life and I seem to have been getting better and better the more years I lived and the more I learned. But as I near my 31st birthday, I am feeling more panicky, as if I no longer have the leeway or the right to behave in certain ways or to do certain things. Some part of me even demands justification for being here in Brazil--what right do I have to have what appears to be an unconventional amount of freedom? Shouldn't I have a job I can't escape from, a mortgage or other long-term loans to be beholden to? Shouldn't I have commitments? And another part of me takes another approach, telling me that if I don't hurry up, I will end up one of those eccentric middle-aged woman professors, never married, spending too much time in her herb garden with plants, abstract stone statues and bottles of Shiraz, and spouting random epithets to her late-20s graduate students, who will tell stories about her behind her back. This anxiety sometimes leads to melancholic moments, which I spend in my room listening to Damien Rice and The Frames (why are Irish musicians so fitting for those moments?) being lonely and forgetting how good I have it.
Because, really, let's put this into context: I recently got out of an on-and-off-again (mostly on) four-year relationship with Danny in Nicaragua, a relationship which (at least afterwards) I learned my own value. And it is okay to feel angry, when it is an honest anger, when I know, after a lot of reflection, that I really do have something to be angry about, and I can say no, I don´t want anymore of what we had before. Maybe that is a bit vague, but you probably get it anyway. So I have been spending a lot of time alone, especially in the last week or so, letting the bright and clear reality of this anger come over me. It has not been a hard or intense kind of process; instead it was simple and calm. It occurred as I made painless decisions in various small moments not to give too much, too soon, in this arena of love, but not to be cynical about it either. I want to be open.
And as far as the other stuff, let's put that into context, too: I will do what I can to consciously not become an eccentric (lonely) older woman, but I will indeed live the way I want to, and not give in just yet to those cultural expectations of 30-something women, in terms of what I should own or what I should do. I am not going to tie myself down to money or property, not as long as I feel, know, that I have more stories to tell, other things I want to be. Just so you have an idea of what I am talking about, here is the latest crazy dream that I have decided to pursue as soon as I get to England: I am going to learn guitar. I want to sing, and I need someone to accompany me on guitar, and no one else is going to do that for me if I won't do it for myself.
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You left out an extensive collection of clogs and other weird, ugly shoes and having a pet Basenji for the middle-aged female professor trope. Kidding. Screw normative lifetime schedules. I'm from Alabama and by that rationale I should now (at 28) either have a nice comfy law job, an SUV and way-too-big house with a mean, petty wife...or a meth or Oxycontin addiction and my own 3-acre plot of scraggly pine trees. Except neither extremes are true. Keep doing your own thing. The music sounds cool, although pop that mopey shite out of the CD player. Keep up the blogging. Al and I miss hanging out with you.
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