Oh how time flies

I can't help but be preoccupied with my impending birthday. In 8 days time I will be 29 years old. Yes, I know, it's not that old. The number isn't really what's getting to me. Sure, its that much closer to the big 3-0, but thats not it. Now I know I'm one of millions that have this problem the older they get and I am most definitely not the first one to express it.

I think its funny how we, as a human race, live. We're born, reared by parents and molded into an "individual". Then we're left to our own devices to birth and rear our own children if we so choose and otherwise make a life for ourselves. At this point in my life I feel as though I'm playing house. But not even a good version of house. With me about to turn 29 and the genius about to turn 11 shortly after I've been thinking a lot about the future, something that is unknown territory to me. In six and a half short years he will be ready to head off to a school some 800 miles away to pursue a long desired career. I realize that things change, but him talking about his plans already is really bringing me to reality.

The more I take a look around at my surroundings I notice...something I can't quite put my finger on. I've just been realizing that I don't think 17 and 18 year olds are old enough, maturity wise, to be out in the world on their own. I go school with a lot of girls around that age, and no offense to them because some of them are actually really rad, but I see it, the lack of life behind their eyes. I honestly don't know how I did it. I clearly was too stupid to be making my own decisions. I started having sex when I was seventeen (nowhere near as early as some of my other friends), got pregnant, graduated high school and married all in a matter of months. Then came 19. Separated after a whole year of playing house, I met who would be a pivotal player in my game of life.

I moved in with my mom, aka the live-in babysitter. I worked full-time and started learning how to live my life again. Enter the pivotal player. She was a anomaly. The anomaly and I then came to what I will now refer to as the wonder years. As in, "I wonder what happened that week because we were so wasted". I was seperated, young and didn't really know the possibilities. And then I found out. Cue the sex, drugs and rock and roll...literally, we partied like rock stars. That lasted until I got pregnant with the princess at 21. Back to playing house. Fast forward to separation yet again. I realized that even though I was, am, a good mom, I'm not cut out for the married life. Too much restraints and shackles. Call me masculine, I call it free-spirited. Nonetheless, I feel at that age I should have still been in high school not taking care of a family.

Now as my looming birthday rears its ugly head I still feel unready to take the world at large. Maybe because I have still not ventured out on my own as a true adult. Or maybe its because I'm high in the ranks of perpetually, emotionally stunted big kids. The very thought of my unreadiness gives me bats. And not the cute little I've-become-smitten-with-a-cute-boy kind of bats, the holy-shit-I-don't-know-what-I'm-doing kind.

Well, what's a girl to do, but go on living life at best while I fight like hell to not lose two of the most important things in my life...my sanity and my self. Emotionally retarded isn't the correct ailment, but its the first that comes to mind.