This past Saturday I turned 29. I celebrated with a few close friends for what will probably be the last party thrown in an apartment that has hosted so many wonderful ones throughout the years. It’s only natural that with everything going on, coupled with a birthday, I should be feeling a little introspective. I can’t help but feel like I’ve kind of made it through… I mean I understand that there are so many more years ahead of me that will be filled with good times and bad things. Years that will be filled with new lessons learned, heartbreak, and a million new experiences. But the last 29 years? I made it through.
My friend Jan looked at me the other night as I was offering her advice on dating (it’s okay to laugh here lol) and she said “I look at you and I don’t know how you do it. But I want to. You are at such an amazing time in your life and you are so independent.” I think it was right there at that moment when it hit me that everything she’d just said was right. I am standing on my own two feet, and damn that feels good.
Here I am, 29 years old and I have so much going for me. I’m in school, I own my own car (two actually until my brother pays the one he’s driving off!), I have a good job with grown-up benefits, and I’m buying a house. On. My. Own.
I spent a good chunk of my twenties waiting for “Mr. Right” to come along. I met a lot of “Mr. Right Now”, and a lot of “Mr. Totally Wrong For Me”, but never the right person who would love me back as much as I loved them, or who would be on the same page at the same time with me enough to try for something real. There were all these things I told myself I would do when I met “Mr. Right”, and buying a house was one of them. Buying a house is such a huge responsibility. It requires a lot of money, time, and adult decision making-it all just sounded so much easier with a partner. But he never came, and I finally stopped waiting and decided to just buy a house on my own.
It is both the scariest and most empowering thing I’ve ever done. The scary part is understandable, but the empowering part comes from a place where I am doing this without anyone else making the decisions for me, or anyone else providing money for it… Just me. I’m sure I”ll have a lot of help from friends and family with the process-I’ve already been talked down from the ledge a few times, and my friends and family have provided very valuable input-they’re great like that; but the main stuff? That’s all me.
And “Mr. Right”? Maybe he’ll turn up one day, or maybe he wont, but either way I’m going to be just fine, better than fine… I’m kind of amazing at 29 years old.
