Late 20's and Cheap Champagne

So I'm turning 26 in two weeks. Usually when a New Year and new birthday come about, while I don't make resolutions, I do start to feel like maybe things will be different, but this year I don't feel that way. Whether or not its because of the fact that I'm getting older and I'm less unrealistic about change, or its because of the fact that things this year have been rough and its difficult to picture things being different or better, life in general appears no different to me than it did the day before New Years. I don't know if I was just absurdly childish and optimistic up until now or if I just wanted so badly to believe that I had the power to change things in my life, but whatever it was it spurred me to continue in the optimistic hope( more than belief) that things could and might be different.

When I look back over this last year I know that I still concern myself too much over what people think of me. I still get into arguments with the people I care deeply about, I still choose to deal with and care about individuals who don't really care that much for me, and I still like to put up a very tough exterior while feeling very fragile on the inside. I'm sure some of you are saying if I haven't changed that stuff by now I should grow up and change already cause its about damn time. And that might be fair in a lot of ways. I mean, honestly I've been working with all this personal stuff since I was young so I should have learned my lesson and moved on, but I guess the thing of it is that I haven't. It sounds over simplified but one of the things you learn as a therapist is that as a person you don't change until you're ready to and you consistently deal with the same problem over and over in varying forms until it's resolved- whenever that may be. And I guess maybe these things are why I feel that I've made no progress in my life this year, but at the same time I know that's not true.

In this past year I've been forced to figure out this whole loss concept and what it means to be left by someone before you can walk out on them. My M.O. in the past about that had always been to leave before getting left which made perfect sense to me because even if it was childish it meant that I was in control of the when the where and the reaction I would have to the loss- I could plot this stuff out and have the dialogue worked out in my head before the other person even knew what hit them. When I had to deal with someone close to me leaving me behind and moving on in life before me I realized how impermanent everything was and how important it was to keep letting those in your life know how the role they play impacts you. I also learned how shitty it was of me to just cut people out in the ways that I did and I began to understand that it was better for me to deal with loss by acknowledging it rather than sweeping it under the rug and busying myself with the next activity or person.

I've also, in this past year, been asked to deal with, to a small degree, my own mortality and what it means at core to be a woman. Finding a lump in my breast was the scariest thing in the world to me for many reasons, but beyond dealing with the possibility of a fight with cancer and beyond the vanity and fear that came with something so intrinsic to my womanhood being attacked by my own body it taught me several things. Mainly it taught me how strong other people are who have gone through much more than me, and secondly it taught me how wonderful and amazing and supportive friends can be. I pushed a lot of people away by not telling them a thing about what was going on, and while my boyfriend at the time took off after I told him and before my first test results were in, my friends, even the friends who were hurt by my hiding this, were such a powerful force that it still makes me teary to think about the ways they helped me not be afraid and look at the reality of the situation. They helped me face this scary thing that turned out to be something I could laugh at and joke about thanks to their support and that to me was one of the greatest feelings in the world, and made me realize how ok it is to ask for help sometimes and take help sometimes.

I also started learning what it means to quietly and gently let things go. Relationships and friendships have never been easy for me because of how important I consider the people in my life. I need the people I have in my life for various reasons- some because they make me laugh, some because they make me see how foolish I am, some because they need me as much as I need them and that feels good, and some because I know they depend on me. But what I began to understand was that everything has a beginning, an end and a purpose in the middle and while I still don't fully believe it and am not fully ready to accept it I know that once that purpose is served its ok for me to let go of things and people and concepts so long as I keep a place for them within me and acknowledge what they taught me with love and respect.

If I'm being honest with my readers right now I'm starting to feel a little too serious about all this, and since that's one of the things I haven't really learned to cope with yet I think I should start getting to my point, which is this:

I guess for me many things in life change and many stay the same and many I find I stay struggling with for a painfully long time until I finally figure out the really basic message of whatever it is. And while I can always sit here and wish and hope that each new year or each new birthday will bring me complete and total enlightenment, change, readjustment- whatever it is I'm calling it -ultimately sometimes its ok to slow down and just be alright with myself and my pace every now and then and accept the fact that change doesn't happen over night and may never happen and that what I wish for may not ever occur in my life time and all that is ok. Not to get all philosophical, especially about things I know barely anything about, but in Zen Buddhism they believe that everything is perfect as it is simply because that's how its happening and if it was meant to happen any other way it would have, and while that seems really obvious and basic it is extremely tricky to fully believe in and put into practice- at least for an individual like me who still cares deeply what others think of me and still believes that I am responsible for and can fix the moods/ mood swings of those around me- but those can be issues of change for another time.