OVER THE HILL AND THROUGH THE WOODS.

Lordy Lordy, here I am 40.  Do yal remember when your parents turned 40 – I do. ‘Over the hill’ was a real moment then — black balloons, ghostly crepe paper streamers on the car, flamingos tinged with a deathly gray palor – there was no illusion in the 80s that life does anything but end, and she’ll be coming around the mountain when she comes.

Now we have Goop elixirs, frozen eggs and botox to keep us humming (preoccupied), as if the grim reaper swiped right on us and we’ve got all the time in the world to live our very #bestlives.  Ain’t no mountain high, much less a sad little hill, holding us back from Oprah, actualization and infinite influencer status.   As an elder-millennial, I’m a little tipsy on the cool-crowd punch, so I’m totally into this 40s thing.  Here 👏🏻  for 👏🏻 it as the kids would say.

My 30s were rocky.  A doozy of a decade, that began in a bucolic boredom so thick that each step forward was like wresting a mud-soaked mukluk from quicksand.

Let me be very clear, because you’ve been with me since the beginning, that I do not pin this ennui to Brian Meares. He happened to be cohabitating with me during a time my own hang-ups were holding me hostage.

Many years of therapy, and I’m starting to shirk of the stench of privileged asshole.  It’s a hard skin to shed, and there have been a cast of casualties along the way that I regret doing wrong by: Brian, my best friend from home – Jennifer, and my mom, namely.  It took the latter part of the decade to help me come terms with what I trashed in the former.

From my vantage point on this side of the ‘hill’, I can see that all the garbage was 100% essential for me to grow up, but not grow old.  With new knowledge of what it means to be a good friend (foremost to myself), a partner, a boss, a dog-mom and a better citizen of this crazy world, my current 99 problems do not include turning 40.  I’m happy and healthy, I’m loved and I’m confident this next decade will dolphinately be lived on porpoise 🐬