Today I’m 36, which has affected me more than turning 18, 21 or 30 put together. 36 means I’m closer to 40 than 30 (although Jennifer would argue that since I love to round up, I’ve been closer to 40 since I was 29). What’s the big deal with 40? I have no idea. It’s just that 36 seems a bit, well, I don’t know - closer to middle-aged.
Throughout the week I’ve been doing some self-analysis to determine what is really bugging me about this birthday. I’ve broken it into some nice bullety-points:
Where am I?
This birthday coincides with a particularly low point in my career. While Mike’s has taken off, mine is sort of stalled at the moment as I completely switch gears and begin to process of extricating myself from the consulting world into something that makes me a lot happier and provides me with more time and energy for my children. My feeling of gloom about my current status is temporary, because I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. However, I never expected to feel this way at 36, 16 (gulp) years into a career filled with a lot of hard work and intense struggle to get where I thought I should be. Switching gears mid-stream means making no money right now and dealing with debt and staying focused on the positive. However, for my birthday, I’d like the gift of wallowing for one day so I can fully experience the absolute terror I manage to squash the other 364 days of the year. To remember what it was like to contribute financially to my household instead of dragging it down. To be able to buy some new clothes without feeling guilty. To not freak out when our air-conditioning unit coil craps out and we get an unexpected bill for $1044 and it has to go where everything else as of late has gone - the credit card. On the bright side, I sure am earning lots of Amazon.com gift certificates with my Amazon Chase Card! Thanks, Chase! Perhaps I can buy a book on surviving a career shift in mid-life with those coupons.
Fudgie the Whale Goes to the Gym
It’s not a secret that I take Zoloft for a long battle with depression and an eating disorder that reared its thin little body throughout my college years and my 20’s. Zoloft has radically changed my life by smoothing out the ridiculous high and low points of my mood swings, and making me generally more accepting of my body and all of its little imperfections. It’s allowed me to live a mostly happy, mostly content life, and it has definitely helped me be a better mother (take that, Tom Cruise).
One of the things I don’t like about Zoloft, however, is that this is the second time in my life where the drug has made me so “accepting” of my body that I’ve just sort of let it all go. The first time was after my senior year in college, and I was living with a boyfriend who hadn’t figured out he was gay yet (this really wreaked havoc on my self-esteem, I might add), working for a company falling into bankruptcy, and taking a very high dosage of an antidepressant while simultaneously not being seen on a regular basis by any kind of doctor, let alone a psychiatrist. I woke up one year after my college graduation in the dressing room at a department store, where I was shopping for interview suits after being laid off from the afore-mentioned company and told by my boyfriend that he didn’t love me anymore, but could I please still pay half the rent? I felt like that allergy commercial where everything was fuzzy, but then the film is removed, and everything is brutally clear and well-defined. I realized I couldn’t fit into the size of clothing I thought I still wore, and that I had gained close to 40 pounds, and I was really quite unlike what I thought I looked like.
All my stories have happy endings, however. I went to the doctor. We adjusted my dosage. I moved to the Southeast (sometimes I still wonder what I was thinking). I lost a bunch of weight. I went to the gym a lot. I rock climbed, hiked, ran, biked, did yoga, and had a lot of friends into the same thing as me. I was in the best shape physically and mentally of my life. Although I would never be as thin again as my senior year of college (anorexia has a way of slimming you down quickly), I understood finally that being less than 100 pounds was not the same thing as being healthy.
Then I met Mike, got married, and here the cliches begin. I had two children. I had a heinous first pregnancy where my OB/GYN limited my exercise at 7 weeks. I was ridiculously sick. My average day at work consisted of “This is Cristina, can you hold please?” while I ralphed into a garbage can under my desk. When I could get the food down, I ate anything and everything. If I wanted Taco Bell at 4 AM, I got it. It was like a food orgy - all those years of watching carefully what went in my mouth were tossed into the wind with abandon. Cake for breakfast? Why the hell not? After Lily was born, it took another year just for me to stop wanting to sleep with all my free time. As I started to get back into more healthful patterns and lose some of the weight I’d gained with Lily, I got pregnant with Arden. I didn’t gain nearly the weight with Arden as I did with Lily (thank you, campylobacter, for making me incredibly ill for 2 months, and thank you, kidney stone for doing the same), but she’s now 2+ years old and it’s time.
It happened again - I looked in a FULL-LENGTH mirror, took a fat analysis test, and a hard look at my lifestyle. I made a lot of excuses, and some of them are even valid - I work like a maniac, I have two small children, I am self-employed, we are on a limited budget, blah blah blah - but the fact of the matter is that I had let myself go, big-time.
So Fudgie the Whale is back in the gym. Happy Birthday - I weighed myself today. It appears I may have lost 4 pounds for all the sweating and grunting and calorie-limiting and fat-restricting I’ve done, but I keep reminding myself it took years to get to this point. I’d just like to not look like a stuffed sausage at Mike’s dad’s wedding in June. I have realistic expectations - I don’t think I’ll ever be like I was pre-children. I’ve got some nice scars to show for birthing them, including my widened hips and sturdy back. I don’t have bird-bones like my mother; I’m more like my dad. I’d just like to be able to look at myself and honestly say, I’m good. I’m okay. I’m content.
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So am I aging gracefully? I’m not sure anyone does. I think I’ve finally hit the point in my life where I can start to focus on myself again - at least a little bit. I can take care of myself while still taking care of my family. I can stop doing things that inspire misery, and focus on things that help me be more centered and happy. A long time ago, a freaky girl I worked with read my tarot cards. She told me my 20’s would be fraught with turmoil and drama and that I would make a decision about being with someone that made me insane or being with someone that truly supported and love me, and my 30s would be the happiest time of my life. So far, she’s been right on. I chose Mike over all that Michigan drama. I let go of the things, people, and jobs that made me feel crazy. Turning 36 isn’t the end of the world, but it is a wake up call for me that I need to continue down the road I’m on right now so I stay physically and mentally healthy for my children, friends, family, and most importantly (yes, I just said most importantly), myself.
