Birthday Blog

So. It's my birthday. I'm 26.

I'm not sure how I feel about that. On one hand, I am now firmly out of my early twenties and smack dab in that comfortable mid-twenties age bracket where you are neither too young for things nor too old for them.

On the other hand, I don't think that anyone aspires to be mid-twenties, single, unemployed, and living with mom.

In my defense, I've had a rather busy year. I got dumped, fired, and pregnant, my dad died, my car broke down four times, and I placed my baby for adoption. I think I can be forgiven for taking a little time for myself to figure things out.

Part of me feels that, at my age, I should know what I want to do with my life. I thought I did, actually. But the more I look into certain degree programs, the less excited I get about going back to school. I'm not even going to get in to the cost of ASU.

At the moment, I have an AGS, a cosmetology license, and a notary commission for the state of Arizona. I sort of like that none of those things are the least bit related. It makes for an interesting resume. I've considered spending the next few years getting more interesting little certifications and qualifications, just so I could print up the world's strangest business cards. For instance, I'm considering learning to drive a forklift. How cool would that be if my business card said "Jill Elizabeth. Hairstylist, notary, forklift operator"?

(Pardon me while I have a strange interlude. It bothers me that I can't ever remember whether in cases like the preceding I should put the question mark inside or outside the quotation marks. I think I'm doing it wrong, but it doesn't look right when I do it the other way. Grr. Okay, end interlude.)

I've also recently got it into my head to become a CNA. And a pharmacy technician. And I'd love to learn stunt driving. And get a masters in social work - which of course means I'd have to first get a bachelor's in social work.

None of this has anything to do with my birthday, does it? I've slept seven hours in two days (I've been doing school presentations for LDSFS, and high school classes are early) so I have the attention span of a fruit bat at the moment.

But it's my birthday, and if I want to ramble, I'll ramble.

I have a personal history of bad birthdays. I had good ones as a child, but the older I got, the worse my birthdays became. I think it was my eighth birthday party when one of my friends convinced another two of my friends that none of them liked me anymore.

There was one year when I was late getting home to a family party, and I arrived to find that my relatives had eaten most of my cake without me. No candles, no singing. There was the year I was in a car accident. The year I started taking antidepressants. The year everyone but my parents seemed to have forgotten my birthday. The year I failed my driving test. The year my college roommate's bad hygiene made the dorm room smell like excrement. The year my mom was in the hospital for gallstones. The year I was in beauty school learning exactly how little talent I had for doing highlights. The year I had to work at the salon for ten hours all by myself. The year my dad had cancer. And last year, when I found out I was pregnant.

Happy birthday? Not possible.

This year's been pretty good, actually. I think partly because I had such low expectations, but there you are. I had to wake up early to do two more school presentations, but then I had brunch with a friend and then relaxed and played a video game and read a bit and went shopping and went out to dinner with my mother and came home to watch TV and chill.

Not the most exciting birthday in the world by anyone's standards. But nothing horrible happened and except for my birthday migraine, I feel alright. So far my 27th year is off to a dull start. But on the upside, dull is better than bad, and I did get a free Grand Slam.

Happy Anniversary! You're Crazy.

Tomorrow is kind of a big day for me. Kind of.

It's also sort of depressing. Tomorrow is the four-year anniversary of my being in therapy (with this particular therapist, anyway). This is depressing for several reasons, two of which are that 1) my relationship with John is the longest I've ever had with anyone to whom I am not related, and 2) it's been 4 years, and I am still in therapy.

I mentioned the anniversary to John last Thursday at our session. He wasn't sure of the date. He unearthed my file, which is dangerously thick.

He rifled through a heavy stack of session notes to the last page. "Four years," he said. I wondered if he was thinking what I was, which is that I'm not sure what it says about his skills as a therapist that I am still seeing him four years later, and I'm not quite 26 so how screwed up can I really be yet that I need four years of therapy?

He then asked me what sorts of things I felt I still needed to work on. I'm sure he was thinking along the lines of grieving my father's death and my baby's adoption and the anger I have at my ex.

But what I was thinking to myself, that I almost blurted out, was, "I have a problem, John, and it is a big one. I have spent more time wondering about you and your cat than I have spent on anything else this week."

I didn't say that, of course. I thought about it - several times I thought about it, throughout my session. And at one point I actually laughed out loud about it. John asked what was so funny and I had to make something up to keep from telling him that every time I drive past a pet supply store I picture him inside pushing his cat up and down the aisles in a shopping cart.

I told him what I felt I still needed to work on, and he said something about how those were valid issues, blah blah blah, and as he spoke I pictured him discussing boundary issues with his cat.

I'm not sure how much longer I can keep this up. Eventually I am going to have to tell him about the cat problem, and I'm not sure how he'll react. I'm hoping he will find it funny and we can have a good laugh about it and move on.

I am terrified that he will feel the need to give me details to set me straight on the subject. I know too much already. What if I discover something even more distracting? What am I going to do then?

I think it's probably a good thing that, four years later, I am still in therapy. I seem to need it.

Accentuate the ... negative?

I have been trying for over an hour now to update this blog.

I feel like I have plenty of things to say, but two problems keep coming up.

The first is that I don't feel like I'm particularly funny anymore. I used to be able to crank out three or four rants in a sitting, and find them rather clever and well-written, with at least one turn of phrase of which I was particularly proud. But lately I can't even make a joke about infomercials, which is saying something.

The second problem has to do with a promise I made to myself, one I made, if I'm honest, in part to get my therapist off my back. I promised myself I wasn't going to be such a negative person. That I was going to try to lighten up a bit, try to be humorous without being sarcastic.

It's a lot harder than I thought. I'm not sure what it says about me that I can't be funny without being mean. I don't like the thought. I have always thought that I was just generally a rather clever person. I didn't concern myself with the fact that I was overly sarcastic.

I'm starting to wonder if I've ever been funny at all, or if it was just rudeness. If it's the latter, that's sort of an earth-shattering revelation. My sense of humor is an integral part of who I am. I don't like to think that rudeness or nastiness are such a big part of my personality.

Am I a negative person? I've never really thought so, but lately I've started to wonder. I don't want to be a negative person. I want to be clever and funny without risking offense. I wonder if I can.

But I think I've mostly decided that, if I can't be funny sans sarcasm, I simply won't be funny anymore. I want to be a happy person. I want to be the sort of person that my family can be proud of, that others will be drawn to.

One thing I've learned about myself over the years is that I am capable of doing very hard things, of living through hard things and becoming stronger for it. Lately I feel I've had more than my share of hard times, and I do wish God would back off a bit. But if this is the lesson that I need to learn, I'll learn it.

Maybe I won't be funny anymore. But I am going to try to be happy. I am going to try to be positive.

I should probably start by getting up before noon.