Reminiscing

The internet can be such a surprising place. And I just don't mean the odd You.tube video. I recently discovered that a fellow blogger and I went to the same high school, a year apart. And while we didn't know each other while at school, this realization sent me running for my high school year book. Which then set me off on a trip down memory lane.

Seeing myself in the yearbook, my young, 17-year old self, it makes me think about what I thought my life would become when I was 17. I thought I'd follow certain career paths, live certain places, do certain things. I really thought I'd knew where my life was going. Yeah, even at 17, I thought I had a plan. And in many ways, I guess I did. I got the degrees I thought I would, followed those career paths for the next 15 years. I lived in several major American cities. I travelled, met great people who became great friends.

But somehow, in the last 3 years, things have fallen off the rails. My career choices just don't excite me anymore. I settled in a city, been here over 10 years now. I started feeling the clock ticking, wanting children, something my 17 year old self (or even my 27 year old self) wasn't even sure I would ever want.

And today, on my 37th birthday, I'm feeling sort of melancholy. My life is not where I thought it would be, not where I want it to be. Career-wise, not at all. There, I'm totally lost. And before getting married, Mr. P and I decided we wanted a family. I was 33 then. We thought, let's wait a year before trying, give ourselves the honeymoon year before the kids would come. Well, clearly we are still waiting. I'm not where I want to be, and for the first time in my life, there is nothing I can do to change this. If you asked me on my wedding day what my 37 year old self would be doing, I would have said (maybe not out loud, but to my private self) I'd be on my second child. It's like time is ticking by, while my feet are cemented to the ground. On better days, I remind myself of my frozen family, and I do have hope for them. But on days like today, on my birthday, I'm feeling like a bit of a failure. Stagnant, unsure, lost.

I commented on a blog a few weeks back about how IF is really the first time in my life that things have not gone as I planned. And while I am so fortunate in my life that it took until my mid-30s for me to have a real struggle, challenge, failure - I'm still feeling at a loss on how to deal with it. I can't use all the things my 17 year old self would have - setting realistic goals, hard work, and determination. My 37 old self, newly born today, pretty much knows none of that will work.