On turning 50

I never thought I'd see the day.  No, seriously, I never did, and considering my youth and suicidal tendencies, I had good reason to doubt I'd ever make it to fifty.  Well, here I am, what do I think about this?  Well, first, I got engaged on my birthday.  I didn't see that coming.  I mean, M and I have been together for over thirteen years, of course I knew we would get married once the Defense of Marriage Act was overturned.  It was overturned while I was flying out to Seattle.  I turned my phone on once the plane landed and had non-stop text messages from family and friends shouting various forms of "DOMA is dead," "you can get married now!" 

 Still, I never expected M to actually propose, so that was a surprise.  Also, I'm 50!  I'm getting married!  Someone still finds me desirable enough to want to hitch their wagon to mine.  That surprises me too.  I don't often feel attractive or lovable, so the fact that somebody else finds me this way also surprises me.  So 50, in just the first fifteen days has been full of surprises.  I went and picked up our marriage license today.  People wished me well.  We have six months to get the ceremony done, lots of planning to do.  We got our rings on Sunday.  No engagement ring, I didn't want one, but a pretty wedding band with little diamonds around it.  

The birthday itself was interesting on a separate level.  I got to be in Vancouver on my birthday.  Vancouver, my favorite city, the place of my epiphany, the place where I finally chose life over giving up for the last time.  So while I was there with M and other family, and I was playing tour guide, taking them all around Stanley Park, showing them English Bay and Lion's Gate Bridge, I was remembering the first time I saw these places twenty years earlier.  I was such a different person then.  My perspectives were different, my experiences, my possibilities.  The first time I was there, I just wanted to go to sleep and never wake again.  I was in so much pain and not only could I not see a way out, I didn't believe I had the strength to try to change anything.  Everything seemed so hopeless.  

So I found myself there again, twenty years later, a different person, wiser, stronger, happier, more experienced, and so grateful something intervened for me all those years ago.  I had wanted to be there on my birthday as an affirmation, as a way to remember and thank the universe for this life I now have.  It has been such a hard, painful, happy, sad, stressful, exhilarating, mind altering twenty years.  I never could have imagined all life had in store for me, so glad I stuck around to find out. 

So that was my inner experience of my birthday, I will share pictures in a following post of the outer experience, where we stayed, people I hung out with.  It was a wonderful visit.