Thirty For Thirty

Today is my thirtieth birthday. I keep expecting to feel some way about it, but I kind of don't, really. The more I think about it, I'm just one day older, and it's thirty, for the love of god, not ninety. 
I think one of the reasons I don't really care about getting older is that I lucked out with genetics. I look younger than I really am, which won't last, but most of that is because I am the height of an average fifth-grader, which will last. I've watched most of my friends cross over into their thirties this year and the issue that keeps coming up with those of them who have a hard time with it is not being where they "expected to be" at their current age. Dudes, I wanted to say, no one ends up where they want to be at thirty except maybe Alexander the Great. Or Mark Zuckerberg. But he's still not there yet. There is time for him to fail.
When I turned twenty, I was in a very different place. I was living with my sister, I was unemployed, and I hadn't even had sex yet. I hadn't even met Najwa, who is now my closest, dearest friend, and hadn't yet reconnected with Tony, who is my other best friend. Still, I'm pretty much the same person I was. I'm single, just like I was ten years ago and I like to dance inappropriately, even more so than I did ten years ago. The only big changes are that I've stopped grooming my eyebrows so obsessively and I've stopped wishing my ass was smaller. I want my old eyebrows back, and I want an ass you could balance three or four cans of Coke on.
I am definitely not where I thought I would be at thirty. I thought I would still be married and I thought I would have at least one child by now. But, that wasn't the plan for me, and it's stupid for me to even make plans. When I make plans, the world laughs, and I have to learn to improvise. This whole past year of my life has been about improvising, because I have no fucking idea what I'm doing, and that's not just when I am at work. I've gotten comfortable with not knowing what I am doing, even when I'm just walking down the street or having a conversation. I'm pretty hopeless, but maybe I'll learn to not be so hopeless in my thirties.
I am lucky to have a best friend like Najwa, who threw me my very own dance party. In the months leading up to when I would have to either plan some way to celebrate or just decide not to do anything, I kept hearing that voice in my head, which happens to sound just like Regina George, saying, "Stop trying to make your birthday happen. It's never going to happen."
Every time I have tried to put together something for my own birthday, I have failed. I am not including my last birthday, which was, of course, hosted by Najwa and Gabriel,  in that assessment, but I have bad associations with it now. From that party is the last photograph that will ever be taken of Gino and I as a couple, and Jesus, does he look unhappy in it. It was a fun party, but now it's got this pall over it, and I am still having trouble remembering it as fun.
I might just have bad luck with parties that I am in any way associated with in any other capacity than as an attendee. Any time I try to put together any party, it has been an epic let-down. There must be something about me that just makes some people say, "Uhh, no thanks?"
I still feel guilty about Gino's thirtieth birthday, two years ago, when I tried to organize a surprise party for him and only a handful of people showed up. Planning an event doesn't always work the way you want it to. In your head, you make the list, the people who say they want to come all show up and you have cake and everyone has a nice time. In reality, people say they will be there, but then at the last minute they forget or they find something better to do or they just don't feel like it and they assume they are the only person on the list who did so.
My birthday party this year was not a failure, even though I was competing with a Bruins-Canucks game and two other parties, so some people were absent. I saw the people I wanted to see and I got to dance and I ate too many cupcakes for my own good. And today, I don't have any papers to file or laundry to do or knitting classes to teach, and I'm sitting on my bed drinking water out of a martini glass because why not? It's my birthday, and I can do what I want.