Fourty

Today, I turned 40. I thought I would dread this day. I cried on my 29th birthday because 30 was just around the corner and it was scary. But then I turned 30, and I finally started to feel comfortable in my own skin. I was figuring out what I wanted, and didn't want, out of my relationships with people and with myself. I didn't need a million friends that I needed to pretend for, just a few that I could be my true self around. My thirties was a time where I was finally figuring out who I was. But it was also a time where I wasn't sure what my life had in store for me. 

At 31, I was diagnosed with Lupus. Over the next couple years, my doctors and I worked to figure out a medical plan for me going forward. I spent my 35th birthday in the hospital due to complications and then was in and out of hospital over the next two years. I almost didn't make it to 37. But now here I am, FOURTY. 

I have started getting wrinkles. 
My body aches sometimes (ok, a lot of the time).
I'm getting white hair (I like to call them my sparkles).

I have to wear sensible shoes or else my back hurts.

I have to use sensitive toothpaste. 

I now have to get mammograms (let's hear it for pancake boobies).

I don't understand the lingo of "the kids these days".

People younger than me now call me ma'am.

I don't like music that is too loud.

I don't like loud cars. 

I want people to get off my lawn. 

BUT

I think my wrinkles add character.

My body might ache, but it got me through a scary situation and I lived. 

I can't wait for more white hairs, I dream of being a silver fox. 

My sensible shoes are so comfortable (barefeet is still my favourite though).

My teeth aren't sensitive, thanks to my toothpaste.

Mammograms will help give me a chance at living another 40 years.

It's fun learning some of the new lingo from "the kids". I still don't understand half of it though.

Being called ma'am is a term of respect and no one dislikes respect. 

I remember that I was once younger and liked loud music, I can listen to my own at a tolerable volume.

I don't own a loud car. 

I don't technically even have a lawn so I need to get a grip! 

Fourty years on this planet has been an adventure. Some of it bad but most of it good. Everything we go through and the people we meet along the way shape us into who we are and I like, for the most part, who I am. Fourty years alive and I still feel like I don't know what I want to be when I grow up. But it's fourty years of experiences and memories that are mine. 

I can't wait for the sparkle in the next fourty.