This is one of those topics people generally avoid talking about. But those are my favorite topics to explore! Let’s talk about age! Now I’m not the person who will go around asking other women their age just to be nosey, even though I find joy in investigating others. What fancies my interest in age, is how we define ourselves by a number.
You’ll hear me talk about my childhood best friend a lot in my writing because we’ve been friends since we were in preschool. J and I have so much in common it’s kind of creepy! But i chalk it up to him being my brotha from anotha mother. I feel like our talks about aging started back in high school. We would daydream about what our future would be like and how old we would be when we accomplished each milestone. My dreams were to marry young, be married for a year, and start having babies by the time i was 25. I would get lost in thinking of the perfect country house, with kiddos and dogs running around the yard. When I went to college I held onto those dreams and continued to wait for them all to become real. Birthdays passed and my fairy-tale didn’t happen. As our birthdays would come and go J and I would question what we were doing wrong. How were all of our classmates getting married and having kids but we were no closer than we were in high school to our goals.
Recently J and I sat down together to reflect on our lives. For the first time ever, we both agreed that we weren’t dreading our aging. We didn’t moan and groan over classmates having babies, or our newly engaged/married friends. Instead we reminisced and celebrated the past year. How great it felt to not stress over a number or what we have/haven’t accomplished.
It’s so common to get fixated on where we want be rather than focusing on how we are going to get there. How much of your time is consumed by planning your future, instead of living in the present? Why is it human nature to worry about things we can’t control? Here’s my theory. We look around us and say: That’s where I want to be. Instead we should be thinking; how can i get there? I’m going to state the obvious; we are lazy. We want a mansion but put in the work for a studio apartment. That glowing couple with the beautiful newborn sitting next to you has worked their butts off to get where they are. They’ve tested their relationship to the limits, worked long hours to provide for their growing family, and have had countless sleepless nights. If you put in the work you’ll get your mansion.
Truly Yours,
Jer ❤
Genuinely Jerica 