I don't practice Numerology, but I know an evil number when I see one - written on the "age" line of a form, that is. I'm like that kid in The Sixth Sense who can see dead people, only I didn't get my special ability until the day I turned 30. It's been five and a half years since that day, and I have only recently begun to pull myself out of the dumpster of middle-age. This won't be especially brief, but here's a bit of personal history to explain why I'm writing this blog.
When I was in junior high I used to walk home from school, and almost every day I saw my friend's grandmother outside doing something in her yard. Grandma was always wearing a long loose dress and her hair was long, loose, and gray. No artificial coloring, no sassy cuts, no Bo Derek cornrows. Every time I saw her I would think, "That's gonna be me. I'm gonna grow old gracefully. I'm gonna do what I want, and wear what I want, and I'm not gonna jump through hoops trying to look twenty years younger than I am." If there's one thing you can say about being 13 it's that you are supremely confident that you have life all figured out. Yes, at 13 I knew it all, and more than anything I knew I was going to be unapologetic about my age as the years accumulated. I knew something about feminism and how to be a strong woman, and though I wasn't about to stop shaving my armpits (grody!), I knew that I was going to age gracefully.
Looking back on that larval Allison, I only wish I could laugh. I wish I could say that in the past five and a half years I've come to accept being "in my thirties" with grace. I wish I could say that having achieved such a perspective, I can look back on myself at 13 and smile fondly, shake my head at the naivete of my younger self, and then move bravely through life like one of those women carved on the prow of a ship. I imagine wave after wave of life smashing against my permanently pert breasts as I, in turn, glide through life with an enigmatic half-smile - like a very buoyant Mona Lisa.
I said I wish I could look at it like that. The very day, the very instant that I turned 30, I felt one of my feet slip off the edge of terra firma and straight into my grave. Ask anyone who was there. I dreaded that birthday for months. It was like listening to the Jaws theme for 24 weeks straight. (Here's a bit of trivia - Jaws and I came out the same year.) I might have thought at some point that it couldn't possibly be that bad, that surely on the dreaded day I would wake up to find that Being 30 wasn't all that different from being 29.
Thirty is not the same as 29. It's okay to be single at 29. It's okay to rent at 29. It's okay to wear holey sweatpants and crocs at 29. Try doing any of that when you're 30 and you'll see what I mean. You're not cute anymore. You're not allowed anymore. According to The American Dream, by the time one has achieved the ripe old age of 30, one shall have accomplished the following: A successful career, a happy marriage, the birth of one and one-half children, and ownership of one piece of American property. This is why your metabolism starts to slow down when you turn 30 - you're not supposed to still be trying to get all that stuff.
I could cry about this for...well, forever pretty much. When I turned 30 I wasn't married, I was divorced. I didn't have one and a half children, I had two fully formed kids - one of them was 11 and one was just a year old. (I'll wait while you do that math on that.) I didn't have a career because I gave it up to be a stay at home mom. I didn't own a house - I was living with my boyfriend in the house that he had just bought. In all ways I had completely failed to achieve The Dream, and in many ways I was getting further from achieving it every day. Let me sum it up like this: I didn't have a whole helluva lot of reason to feel good about that birthday.
Now, today is January 26th, 2011. That means I am exactly 35 years and 5 months old. (Since D-day I've taken to celebrating the anniversary of my 26th birthday, so if I didn't know you I would say, "this is my 9th anniversary," which sounds much better than "I'm 35 and a half.") For the past five and a half years I've been moping around, hating myself for not having achieved these things, feeling pathetic because I'm pathologically incapable of letting anyone else share the blame for my failures in life. Frankly, I am too old for this shit.
This blog has been created so that I can share the steps that I am taking to pull myself out of this funk, to save myself, to enjoy being alive. I invite anyone who is struggling against the implacable march of time to join me. Step by step I intend to examine myself, my mistakes, my successes, even my ancestors if necessary in order to start living a life that I can feel good about. There's only one thing left to explain - the name of the blog. Such Good Advice is taken from Alice In Wonderland (the animated Disney version) wherein young Alice says, "I give myself such good advice, but I very seldom follow it." I've been guilty of that myself up until now, but from here on, I'll be following that good advice. I hope you don't even recognize me when I turn 36 - I intend to be that much better!
Regards,
Allison
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