Thoughts on Turning Thirty

I’ve never been that bothered about birthdays; never been one for celebrating them extravagantly or the kind of person who dreads being another year older. Since Jonathan died though they have taken on a new significance. Turning twenty eight hurt because he never even made it to twenty-seven. My twenty-ninth birthday was a month before I left for Australia so I was more focused on my trip than anything else. Turning thirty though is special. We didn’t have much of our future mapped out, get good jobs, buy house, travel to Australia, go salsa dancing in Cuba, have kids. There was no timetable as such but we did say we’d discuss kids when we reached thirty. I am 4 months older than Jonathan so if you knew him then you would know that would mean we’d start talking around my birthday and by his I’d be pregnant. How weird to write that, my life now is so different from what we planned. So thirty is hard because after thirty there were no plans. We didn’t know where we would want to bring up our kids or which one of us would be at home more. We didn’t plan if we would travel more that Australia and Cuba and though we discussed wedding plans we didn’t actually plan on getting married. I can imagine what our future might have been but I will never know if it what he would have imagined for us or if together we would have come up with something completely different.

I remember my parents gave me a dragon statue on my twenty eighth birthday and sorry mum but I hate it. I remember it reminded me of Christmas and thinking that every time I saw it I would remember my first birthday and my first Christmas without Jonathan. I don’t need any reminders, I’ll never forget them. I guess thirty is like that. I know I should celebrate it but I don’t know how I’ll feel on the day. I know I don’t want presents not just because I don’t need anything but because I don’t want any reminders of the day because it will hurt. No matter how good the day itself is and how much fun I have it’s going to hurt like hell that I’m turning thirty and he won’t be and that the kids we planned for this year (and we planned so little) will never be.

I guess we thought we’d be grown-up enough by thirty to handle being parents, I could never have imagined how true and yet how wrong that would be. I grew up a lot in 2009 and more in 2010 then I kinda of grew down in 2011 but in a good way. Even with this backslide and the fact I have no permanent residence and no career I still think I am a lot more responsible than I even was before. I know I’ve come a long way in the last two years and ten months and that everyone who knows and loves me is proud of me. I have a hell of a lot to celebrate and be grateful for which is why I think I would like to celebrate my birthday. I’d like to celebrate the people and the things that the next decade will bring me because I don’t know what they will be. I’d like to remember and celebrate the people and the things the last three decades have given me. But I don’t want any reminders. I do well living in the moment. I’m pretty good day to day but I still dread and hate the milestones. I believe I am capable of celebrating the day but I know when I’ll look back I’ll always shave the thought that it wasn’t right because Jonathan wasn’t there and it wasn’t what we planned and like my first birthday without him, I’ll never have to be reminded of it. Like that day and all the milestones that followed that are etched forever in my mind, I'll  never forget.