Countdown, Day 2: I'm just tired.

Day #2 of the countdown to 30.  I've been pretty busy with the mundane things in life.  There hasn't been a lot of time for art the past couple weeks.  Or, not my version of 'a lot' anyway.  I like to do something creative every day and that hasn't been happening.  It's partially what spurred my need for the countdown to 30.  The countdown is giving me a good excuse to make sure I'm creative each day (at least for a week).  

I've been feeling extraordinarily frazzled lately.  It seems like I'm running around and around on a little hamster wheel and just not getting anywhere.  Despite what this blog makes me seem like, I don't go around in my daily life expressing my feelings with ease.  I am a fabulous bottler.  I bottle up emotions, hopes, dreams, thoughts...anything and everything.  This is a skill I learned really early on in life.  I found out that there are bad people out there, who will use all that stuff against you.  And so, I learned to hide it and made a great mask of smiling and being funny and being happy.  I've been wearing that face for a long time.  

Lately though, my mask has been starting to break down.  People have started to ask me if I'm ok.  And I find myself saying I'm just tired.  And that's the truth and a lie in the same sentence.  I am tired.  Physically, a little.  Mentally and emotionally, I'm exhausted.  I've been keeping myself hidden for so long that I find even I don't know my real self anymore.  I kept pushing myself down underneath all the fake stuff so much, that I don't know what I want.  I'm sad and I don't know how to let myself cry.  I'm angry and I don't know how to express it.  When I'm happy, I don't know if I'm happy or if I'm still just faking it.  I can't tell anymore.  

With that in mind, here's the journal page I made:

I'm just tired...really, I'm ok.

I've been getting asked if I'm nervous to turn 30.  Will it be hard for me?  Do I dread it?  My husband turned 30 last year, and he's thoroughly convinced it's all been downhill for him since then.  

But honestly, I'm not worried about it.  

For one thing, I work in an office where I am the baby of the group.  The next youngest in age is twelve or thirteen years older than me.  The oldest is a couple years away from 70.  Working with these ladies, I know that I'm still a pup!  With any amount of luck, my life isn't even half over yet.  For another thing, I know that age is nothing but a number.  It doesn't matter how old you are, it's how old you feel.  And mostly, I feel like a little kid who's still waiting to be an adult.  That worries me more, I think.

I said earlier in this post that as a kid I learned not to show my true self because people would use it against me.  Well now, at (almost) 30, it's time for a new lesson.  The lesson now is that people can only use it against you if you let them.  The only power other people's opinions have is the power that you give them.  I'm almost 30.  You know who's opinion should matter to me?  Mine.  Finally.  Finally, my opinion should matter.  I've got a lot of catching up to do.  I've squelched my personal thoughts for so long that I barely remember I had them in the first place.  But slowly, slowly, slowly, I'm going to work on revitalizing myself.  I am going to work hard to let who I am and how I think and feel be made known, first to myself and then to others.  

Am I ok?  No, but I will be.