The Year of Optimum Well-being

I didn't really want to displace that sweet picture of me and Adam from the top of my page cause I like lookin' at it, but it's time to update!

Yesterday I turned 28 - gawd it sounds so OLD. I totally thought - when I was younger - that I would have my life all figured out by this age. Married, kids, dog, minivan, etc. WRONG. How wrong I was! If you had told me in high school that on my 28th birthday, I would be living in Washington D.C. working a "front-page"** job for the State Department, missing my sweet boyfriend who I'll be separated from for the next two years and preparing for my first whole body scan after having CANCER, well... Well, I would have laughed in your face!! Haha. That's not MY life! In high school I still thought I was going to be some kind of a writer or, you know, someone who somehow gets paid to be deep and interesting. I thought I would NEVER work a desk job, never conform, never give in to The MAN! Especially not WORKING for The Man... no way! Are you kidding?! I read 1984!! Haha, my poor parents. Sigh. Sorry ma. I know I was incorrigible. But just look how I turned out! See, it all worked out in the end. It alllllways does.

No matter how bleak things seem, no matter how many doors slam in your face, no matter how much you worry and struggle, everything always works itself out in the end. I've been though my fair share of trials and tribulations and usually no amount of struggle on my part improves or changes the situation. Often when we can't see our way out or through, when we want and wish and strive, the thing we really have to do is wait. As the fates weave their tapestry all around us, finally other people and events will play themselves out, and a new door will open and we can move forward again.

I had a great birthday. I got a ton of gifts to unwrap from my sweet mom - some clothes and girly things. She always makes me feel like a princess on my birthday. I went to Ching Ching Cha, a Chinese tea house in Georgetown with my 3 best girlfriends here in DC. We ordered flowering teas and chatted and it was perfect weather for it, being damp and gray and chilly and rainy.

One of the girls is my cousin, Cara. She got married last year and she and her husband moved to DC right afterwards. We are the same age and our dads are identical twins, so our families have always been close and we grew up together. As much as she is like a sister to me, I admit I am a little resentful and jealous of her. We've walked the same path in life, even to our careers in international realtions (she's getting a PhD in political science). We've done basically the same things... but it's always seemed like she does them just a little bit better, has an easier time, always gets what she wants. My path has led through the thorny brier thickets, quicksand and mud holes and she's traveled on the paved superhighway.

Anyway, yesterday she was talking about starting a family in the next couple of years and I felt an intense pang of jealousy and bitterness. It's completely irrational and ridiculous... having kids is not a competition! But part of me wants to be FIRST, at that at least! I don't want to follow in her footsteps! And god forbid we get pregnant around the same time and go through it together. Cause I know how that will go. She won't have any morning sickness, she will stay thin everywhere except her stomach, the baby will pop right out and she'll put on her pre-pregnancy jeans the next day. Her baby will sleep through the night from day one and get a scholarship to Harvard before its first birthday. Who can compete with that?!

Why am I thinking about babies all the time?! Who knows. There really is something to the biological clock thing - my ovaries have a mind of their own. But it also symbolizes what I want most right now - to move on to that phase of my life, to be married, to even be in a position to think about having my own family. And I can't have that right now in the world that I've created for myself. Even if Adam and I get married before he finishes his assignment in Hawaii (in November 2009) it will still be almost two years from now before we can even think about building a life together.

These are the thoughts that keep me up at night. It's an inner struggle. Because I could easily leave my job and go to Hawaii and start that life I want so much. Seriously, how great would that be?! Hawaii, y'all. I don't even particularly like DC that much. The only thing holding me here is my career. If I only had 5 years to live... or, if I had terminal cancer, for example, I sure as heck wouldn't be sitting here in DC waiting. But if I'm not being fatalistic, then it's foolish to leave a good job, especially when it's entirely possible that Adam and I would come back here after he's done in Hawaii anyway.

See, this is the kind of situation that makes you want to struggle. To try and strive and work to change things, to figure SOMETHING out... but as I said before, I know from experience that what I probably have to do is wait. I have to open my eyes and my heart and my life to possibilities. To the possibilities and lessons of being apart from Adam, of it not being time yet.

My goal for this year is to be healthier and happier on March 8, 2009 than I am today. My 28th year is going to be the Year of Optimum Health and Happiness. The Year of Optimum Well-being. I am so grateful for everything in my life - for my family, for Adam, my job... I am the luckiest girl in the world. It's hard to imagine there could be more than this, but somehow I know this year will bring more abundance. Even if I don't have what I want now and don't get what I want now in the end, somehow I feel like things are going to keep getting better and better. Amazingly, impossibly better.

**...as in front page of the newspaper...I work. On those things.