Peppermint Self Help

When you start reading books like 'The Stepmom's Guide to Simplifying Your Life' you stop on page 71 and realize that maybe, just maybe, you are reaching a critical life moment. Checking out any self help book, for that matter, leads to the inevitable 'how did I get to be here' questions we all face in these so called life crisis 'moments'. For some it is really no big deal, for others it is an achievment. For me, approaching my thirtith birthday has stopped me dead in my tracks and I fear I'm about to get run over.

Oh sure, on the surface age is relavent and it really doesn't bother me. Thirty's the new twenty and cake is always fun. But there's that ever looming, deep down voice laughing its ass off at me in my head. There's that one more new wrinkle throwing its age out upon my face, as if to say, 'look at me, you can't put enough wrinkle cream on me, I'm here to stay, just to show your age!'

Only because my birthday nears do I begin to notice the wrinkles and cellulite and gravity that have suddenly appeared. They have been there all along, slowly accumulating over the last decade. And I know it! Denial is a surviving mechanism, at least that's what they (the self-help books) tell me. Wrinkle, deny. Cellulite, deny. Gravity, deny. Birthday, open the door for acknowledgement babe. It's a knockn' and about to come in!

The irony of when your about to hit the end of your third decade, at least for me, is that your appearance is second on the list. By now, you have become comfortable in your body...you have had time to adjust. Physics wrecking havoc upon the human body is slow and sometimes invisible. But the intangible invisibilities of the psyche that you recoginize because of a catalyst, like, oh, I don't know, your'e thirty dirty birthdy, hit home. O.K., my english professors would not have allowed a sentence like that in any of my self-loathing papers, but this is free style creative writing, and they can bite me with my run-on sentences, bad grammar, and spelling errors.

I will be thirty, and damnit, I will write how I want, say what I want, be depresed if I want to, worry about where my life is headed, regret the things I never did, act beneath my age, complain about my birthday to be, mull over my mistakes, and whine about getting old. I have earned that rite, right...whatever. Even if I don't feel so bad about turning thirty.

So bring it on mo fo's, and let the buses wheels turn round n' round. I don't care if 30 squashes me like a bug on a windsheild. I'll let my guts drip down your wiper blades just to piss you off! Go home, hose me off, and read your self help books. By the way, my favorite birthday cake is peppermint.

http://www.picktnproducts.org/food/recipe/recipes_novdec2002.html

http://www.turningthirty.org/