32

 I turned 32 on December 9th. Birthdays, for me, are a time for reflection on the past year and where I am at in my life now. This past year has been monumental for me. I left my marriage, met someone new and dove headfirst into a pandemic romance, bought a home, turned 6 in sobriety years and progressed in my career through an acquisition and promotions. 

When I consider where I was on my 31st birthday to now, the state of my life was quite different. We were headed into lockdown, our first holiday season in the pandemic with little sight of a way out. I was confronting the realization that my marriage was coming to an end, and grieving that deep and painful loss. I was heading into the new year, living in my parents basement and getting ready to put myself back out there again (well virtually, not physically because of the lockdown and all). I felt hopeful, but also terrified of what I was stepping into. I had to surrender to my Higher Power's plan for me. 

At this point, over a year later. I am able to recognize the shifts, trials, tribulations, milestones and achievements of the past year. I am also noticing how I have slowly but surely proceeded to take my will back throughout the course of this past year. I worked very hard to achieve and build the life I was waiting for and wanting to create with my ex-husband here for myself. I have also tried to shape my current relationship, one that is still very fresh, into one that fits within the previous mold. The one that did not work out for me.

I have also felt the pressures of settling down and starting a family that are demonstrated around me through my connections to peers on social media, my friends and family members' lives. Watching my beautiful nephew grow into a busy toddler, and witnessing my friends having children and buying family homes has been both a joy for me and a daunting experience of self-comparison. I am realizing today, that a year after ending my marriage to pursue a life, truly for myself, I have reverted back to old patterns of expecting my current partner to slot himself into my original plan. You know, the one that I ditched because it wasn't working out so well? Sigh.

If my life has demonstrated anything to me thus far about who I am, that is untraditional. This I know to be true. I do not fit the 'mold' that has been portrayed to me by society, my community and my ancestry. I moved to Korea at 23, gave up drinking and substances at 25, lived abroad for 6 years, got married abroad, moved back home 2 years later and transitioned into a new career at 29, and got divorced at 31. This is not a "normal' path, and to be quite honest, I wouldn't want it any other way. These major life events were also not written in the plan I thought I had created for myself. I could have never predicted or planned for them.

When I try to measure up to my peers at work I am several years behind in career, and personal life. When I try to level-set with my family members, I am still very much in that 'reconfiguration' phase. My mind yearns for security and reassurance. And it is so intrinsic for me to seek that security outside of myself. Which leads to me internalizing this timeline and plan for my life that aligns with those of the people around me, so that I can deem myself successful. I am also very much aware, that at 32 a woman's fertility gradually begins to decline. So, naturally, that means I have to have a baby now! lol.

Before sobriety, I sought security, and the settling of my own discomfort through drinking and escaping into partying. And ever since I was a child, I have always sought answers, and reassurance from the people around me, external sources. The last place I naturally think to look is within myself. 

When I take the time to go inwards, I am able to connect with my faith and relationship with God. The God who loves me and has taken such good care of me so far in this lifetime. I have truly been protected and divinely guided. It becomes so obvious to me that the times when I truly let go and surrendered to God's plan for me were the most freeing and beautiful breakthrough moments of my life. 

Nature: the place where I find connection with the God.

So I guess that means that at 32, I am finally letting go of that last thread of my marriage that I was holding onto, the plan for how it was all going to play out. The plan that never came to fruition and likely never will. At least not in the way that I wanted it to. I am accepting all of the untraditional-ness and messiness that both life and me are. I am finally starting to see that there is freedom in that.