Thirty

So my birthday is July 26, 1989.  That means I’ve been 30 years old for three months, this week.  So forgive the belatedness of this post; that’s just how I roll apparently 😜.

My actual birthday didn’t go exactly as planned.  I had shyly asked my friends if they’d mind having a photoshoot for me, after Justin and I went to a sushi buffet.  They were really sweet and willing… and then on the actual day things kept coming up, including a need to go to the DMV and taking care of my skin.  So Justin and I ended up celebrating my birthday with late night overpriced sushi, right before the restaurant closed, and a walk in Downtown Chattanooga.  It was nice, but I was super disappointed.  Tears were shed, which I felt super stupid for.

But I realized that so often I feel like I need a special occasion to let myself be special.  So I felt like if my birthday had passed and gone, I’d lost my opportunity.  And that’s not cool.  Why as adults do we feel the need to reserve being special for when people and events give us permission??  That’s lame.

So instead, I waited until it was pretty outside, instead of 90+ Fahrenheit, like it was at the end of July, and asked my friends to take several hours out of a random Thursday, taking photos of me like the frickn’ covergirl I am 😉.  And they were awesome and did it and made me feel incredible. And I had nearly 2000 photos to go through, which is absolutely bonkers.

But I’ve never felt as pretty in photos as I felt in these ones, and that’s a really special feeling.  I’m a total goober, and they helped me feel like that’s cool and pretty and worth looking at 😊.

At the beginning of my actual birthday, 4am to be exact, I wrote up my feelings on turning 30, Four Sides of Calise style (if you’re not familiar, you might want to check out that intro so you know why four different parts of my mind are talking to myself).  Usually I’d make stick figure comics to go with it, but that takes forever, especially with this much dialogue.

Besides, now I have a photoshoot commemorating being 30-and-3-months old, to illustrate this post instead.  And I’ll caption each picture with which side is predominantly showing, because that’s fun, and I like pinpointing it in myself, and why not?

So yay, I’m the big 3-0 and here’s how I felt about it, as it dawned:

Angelle: Whelp, it’s 4am on our 30th birthday and we can’t sleep.

Squeezy: Accurate.

Ecee: Maybe it’s because we’re excited?

Squeezy: A true statement.

Callous: Or grumpy.

Squeezy: Also true.

Angelle: [Thinking] Overall though, I think our excitement is outweighing our grumpiness, despite all our fear for the future.  Even though we really wanted to have so many more things under our belt by this point… including motherhood—

[Collective sigh]

Angelle: —we really are proud of ourself up to this point.

Ecee: It’s true, we really wouldn’t trade any of our past, if it meant giving up the person we’ve become… even the really hard times.  Although that’s harder to remember sometimes.

Squeezy: Sometimes though I wish we could face the future with just a little more certainty.  Is that too much to ask?!

Ecee:  …But we can face it in a tulle skirt.  That’s almost as good, right?

Squeezy: [giggles] Well I do love styling a good tulle skirt!

Angelle: How are you doing, Callous?

Callous: I…I don’t know, really.  Tired.  Feeling dumb that we stayed up instead of bathing or sleeping.

Angelle: We napped a lot, you know.  We were so tired after work.

Callous: … But it’s not really about today.  It’s about life in general now.  It’s about where we’ve come from and where we’re going.

Ecee: Oh no, when Callous is the nostalgic one, watch out 😉.

Callous: It’s not so much nostalgic as… angsty, I guess.  Nothing new there.  But I just feel on the edge of changes, and it’s frustrating.

Squeezy:  Also accurate.  I’ve been feeling the same thing.

Angelle: We all have.  Truly I think the thing we all want from the next decade, is for it to be bigger, better, and so much less painful than the previous one.

Ecee: And maybe we should focus on what we can be pretty sure about, and what we can be confident will continue to get better.  Like look at our style evolution through our 20s!  Looking at old birthday photos was fun, but a big thing it showed us is our style is on-point for us now!

Squeezy: It’s true, I really feel like we dress like ourself most days now, which is most complete with a splash of each of us.

Angelle: Which means one part vintage pinup office secretary…

Callous: …one part gothic, grunge, rockstar…

Squeezy: …and one part eye-popping neon, mixed patterns, and colored tights…

Ecee: [arms in the air] … finished with a rainbow sprinkle of princess-glitter-lace-lolita, on top!

Angelle: And we need to remember how proud we are of the person we’ve become now.  Like how good we’ve become at helping others, seeing to the core of their problems and knowing what to say to help.

Callous: [quietly] We’ve overcome so much anxiety over the last five years.  The things that used to just paralyze us in the past, that now we just suck it up and handle like champs…

Angelle: Well look at you being Miss Positivity!

Callous:  I have my moments.

Angelle: But it’s important to note that we don’t just “suck it up.”  We’ve actually overcome so much internally.

It’s so tempting, in the pursuit of short-term aims, or even long-term ones that seem out of reach, to just shove our internal processes under the bus, letting our inner workings get ever more gunked up in the pursuit of things that we could much more easily show off to other people.  So many people do that, prioritize visible results, rather than the foundation underneath it all.  But as tempting as it was, we haven’t done that.

Callous:  We’ve focused on improving what we’re made of, as opposed to looking like we’ve got it all put together.

Angelle:  Exactly, Callous!  Are you feeling okay?  You seem too happy.  It’s giving me “Wednesday Addams smiling” vibes.

Callous: [Rolls eyes] I’m happy, sometimes.

Ecee: [Comes and squeezes Callous around the middle]  It’s our birthday!  Callous loves birthdays!

Angelle:  You do??  How did I never know this?

Callous: [Shrugs]  It’s the one day a year I can make entirely about me, how could I *not* love that?

Ecee: Oooo oooh!!  I love that too! We can show off our baby pictures and talk about our favorites, and people tell us how much they love us, and how cute and smiley we are!! 😀

Callous: How cute and smiley *you* are.

Ecee:  Eh, people love me; I make us all look good.

Squeezy:  [Sighs] I’d really like to show off what *I* can do this year.  With aLBoP and aLBoCal… there’s so much I’m good at that we just haven’t found the time to be able to show!

Angelle:  I’m sorry, Squeeze; you’re right.  A lot of times Ecee gets to show our tender, sweet side a lot.  We put her out there because she’s inviting and safe.  And I’ve gotten to stretch my legs with aLBoP, especially helping people in real-time.  And Callous… well we don’t let Callous out as much for obvious reasons, but she’s gotten a lot of time with our friends lately.

Callous: But c’mon, it’s not like you haven’t gotten any airtime lately, Squeezer.  You got to save $60 off on an office supply order the other day.  You were thrilled.  You threw a bridal shower last week… it had a parfait bar where each Disney princess had her own thematic parfait topping!  You handmade hair ties as party favors!

Squeezy:  I know, and I’m proud of stuff like that.  I just feel like I have so much more I could do and show, if I just had time to stretch my legs!  What if I never have time and energy to write posts or make videos on our natural hair care routine, or how to utilize free cloud storage, or how to rock a hybrid digital-analog bullet journal system??  Sometimes I feel like I’ve got so much bouncing around in my arsenal of things I know and ways to use it… and it just sits there; dormant, useless, sad.

Angelle: Sometimes you just have to trust that there’s more life ahead than behind, that the world doesn’t end tomorrow, and that more living can be packed into a single decade than you can remember at the moment.  There’s so much life between here and 40, and every second of it is going to be us.

Ecee: And if you want, I have a wide selection of songs about “Everything is going to be okay” that I could sing to you!

Squeezy:  [laughing] That’s okay, thanks anyway, Ecee.

Callous:  And for now just be happy that we’re going to go gorge on sushi while wearing a cute outfit.  And we’ve got good friends, a great husband, and nice boobs.

Angelle and Ecee: CALLOUS!!!

Callous:  What??  We were being positive about things!  This is me being positive about things!

Angelle: [Facepalming] Anyway… Happy birthday girls!

Ecee: Happy birthday!! 😀

Squeezy: Happy 30 everybody!

Callous: Happy birthday weirdos!  It’s been a %$@$@ of a ride!

Angelle: It’s been an honor Calising with you all, for three decades.

[Group hug]

So it’s been a good three months, and I don’t know what the rest of year 30 will bring.  But I have hope that it’ll be me, and the best version of me I’ve ever been.  And at the end of the day, that’s kinda the goal right?  9 more months of 30, and then 9 more years in the 30s.  Here’s hoping the next decade is all the more epic than the past one.

Much love,
<3 Calise