Today is my birthday.

Try as I may, I’m sitting here focused on the wrong perspective and “the real” meaning behind my turning 39 years old.

I’m so fucking ancient, right now!!

I can literally hear my bones creaking, I can hear myself going deaf and what…what…is that I wrinkle on my……?

My mind tells me that I am old, and I’m not who I used to be though who I used to be wasn’t satisfactory to me when I was that age and not this age.

I was ‘old’ at 21, wait….no.

At 21, I distinctly remember crying and becoming hysterical because I was GROWN and no one treated me like a grown up. I also remember having chicken pox (don’t ask) and going to see Martin Lawrence at Radio City with my girlfriend after the guy I was seeing flaked on me in favor of the older woman that paid his car note and financed his life.

I didn’t care about all that, but I did really want to see Martin Lawrence, I could have asked someone else, ya know?

I also recall being very, very ignorant to the world and facing nearly every day knee deep in the physical exhaustion of working two manual labor jobs, the financial instability not fed by either paycheck and my daughter’s enthusiastic babbling commentary each morning as she needed to do each and every thing FOR her and MYSELF.

I saved for months to buy those tickets, yeah, I went anyway even though I had chicken pox. What did you expect? I was 21!!

True, at 21, thanks to great genes passed down from my centurion ancestors I may have appeared to be 16-17, but that’s besides the point. The point is that….

Today is my birthday and I am single.

And instead of enjoying the time, affection and interest of the several males and females who I am getting familiar with, I still and obsess over the appropriateness of a May/December relationship.

I’m not the only woman in my family who dates younger men, and nearly every partner I’ve ever had has been younger than I, give or take a year but that’s not the point. The point is that…

Today is my birthday.

Am I still sexy?!

My 39 year old self ask myself, “So, what about sexy?”; I know better then to worry about how just the outside appears while the inside is a septic tank.

I now also value my health which would include once and for all getting that dam cigarette out of my life (yes, cancer, I heard…Thank you).

Am I still wanted?

I should be ashamed of myself for allowing my inner Angry Bird to antoganize me with this one?

I am wanted and loved in SO MANY DIFFERENT WAYS that I couldn’t feel unloved or unwanted if I tried, there are too many people around who refuse to let me feel alone.

I value then, I acknowledge them and I allow myself to be surrounded by this love when I need it. This isn’t something I always had available to me or knew what to do with and so now, after having earned a little sweat on my brow, I’m able to accept love in my life.

It takes living to know that love needs to be both given and received. I allow myself to be loved, and I show my love to those around me because this is what humans were meant to DO.

I want to go through my ritual of regrets, I am almost drawn to look back over the previous 365 days and whip myself into a fever at my inability to have accomplished my list of ‘shit I have to get done before I die’, but I won’t.

Not this year.

Life doesn’t have an expiration date….and that’s sexy.