My younger self’s assumption of adulthood was that I would reach a higher level of happy existence having completed an evolution past trivial hangups such as figuring out who I am, trying to stay skinny, pretty, and confident. Oh dear younger self, that was only the tip of the iceberg. I have finally figured only part of myself out. I continue to try to be skinny and because I was raised being told that pretty equals success I shamefully do still care if I’m pretty.

I am reminded of my mother’s words, “You aren’t confident.” Also, her words while I was working my ass off in Hygiene school when a previous school friend landed a gig prostituting herself to a famous football player, “just think, Tina. That could be you.” Her dreamy expression shouted proof that my education meant nothing to her and that beauty and sex would forever be her fantasied priority.

I lived years as a fake extrovert. I was rowdy and loud and desperately seeking approval from anyone who would provide it. I knew something wasn’t right. I knew it felt off. I began observing other families. Their loving but imperfect parents. Their lack of focus on what I looked like and their ability to welcome me in for days at a time gave me a new view of life.

Life does not have to be riddled with self loathing, addiction, blame, guilt, poverty and bad behavior. I can embrace my own truths, live my own life, and nurture my quest for a happy home and a loving family.

I have only recently learned and learned to accept that I am an introvert. The career I was meant for is not the one I am in. I am an office manager of a large dental practice with an independent license for practicing dental hygiene.

As a manager, I have found that I can lead people well but not everyone can be lead. Rules are rules and when a few maintain a belief that rules do not apply to them chaos ensues. I become impatient with non-independent workers and thinkers. If they require ego management I also become impatient. Those not looking in the mirror for the source of their problems, who blame the job, co-workers, or superiors are destined for failure. The only person who needs to appreciate all of your hard work is yourself and your bank account. Hence the adage: Do the same when no one is looking as when they are.

For me, for my emotional survival, business is not personal unless I’m writing.

You know that elusive career that people describe as “If you love your job it doesn’t feel like work.” For me, it’s writing or anything that requires me to withdraw from the outside world and create.

So in fifty years I know what my ideal career would be? That’s it? That’s all I’ve figured out? I have figured a few more things out. First, cat-calling works on some women. I know, I can hardly believe it myself but I’ve seen it with my own eyes.

Second, your life has its own clock. It’s five months to fifty o’clock for this woman. If there was a time-keeper of my life marking decades and years instead of hours and minutes mine would nearly be ringing the praises of it’s fifty o’clock somewhere. The hour hand replaced with a year hand points at a mere five-oh, with the second hand ticking along almost imperceptively measuring months instead of minutes. It appears there is so much time left. But, don’t be fooled.

My mother was sixteen when I was born. I was conceived when she was fifteen years and three months. We grew up together. When I was forty-one she died at age fifty-seven. Now, I’m almost fifty.

I’ve often said that at age fifty I’d be halfway to the end of my life. How is it that I believe I will live until I’m one-hundred years old? It panics me to think any other way. After all, if I die at the same age my mother passed, fifty-seven, I would have been halfway through life at age twenty-eight. And as of today, I’d only have seven years left. Or, perhaps I die at the same age that my maternal grandmother passed–sixty-two. I would have been halfway there at age thirty-one. My paternal grandmother: forty, I think. Unacceptable. Horrible. Terrifying.

Their lives succumbed to cigarettes, and alcohol–suicide.

This obsession with only being halfway there is part of my well-honed survivalist mindset. If I’m only halfway there, the mistakes, the lessons, the oh-shit moments are easier to shoulder. The trauma of my childhood will all have been for a better life later. Right? I will live the second half well versed in who I am and I will have learned what I require to be happy and successful. Right?

Then why am I so worried? Yes, this worry is partly caused by the women before me living such short lives riddled with addiction, men who treated them horribly, and utter dissatisfaction with themselves. It also could be that my observations of human nature have opened my eyes to the masses of people who grossly misinterpret themselves as knowing better for everyone. Our brutally tunneled vision of self and minimal awareness of our impact on each other and our world horrifies me and negates my hope for a better second half.

The greed of power and money, the devastation of our world, and the lack of safety living in it.

Scary, I know. Checkmark survival skillset for fear– rationalize that the bad behavior of all of us is because we are still evolving. Slowly. Visualize sloth.

The third mind-blowing thing I’ve learned in my adult life is that no-one really cares how much I or you struggle. Thank God because I don’t really want to talk about it. Most only want others to see their struggle or tell them how it will all be okay. They, we, project and blame outwardly, and continue to express detestation of mindsets and lifestyles that don’t align with our own. A fundamental hurdle that human brains have not yet evolved past. A more highly evolved human brain fires synapses that have not only the ability but the desire to travel along new neural-pathways avoiding anguish and venom.

Pathways to love instead of hate, judgment, or intolerance.

Human history has proven that hate solves nothing. But, we continue to hate. We rank our own belief systems as more valid and tolerable than someone else’s. This is an archaic mindset proving our brains to be of the lowliest evolved on the planet. The fittest: cycle breakers who love their own lives and ignore the lives of others while living cohesively. Those who travel a newly paved highway of problem-solving and all-inclusive civil rights are the most highly evolved.

I thought I was a cycle breaker. So far, I was wrong. I’m still infected therefore infectious.

I was told by my mother’s words and my father’s actions that I would never be enough. I’d never be pretty enough, skinny enough, chesty enough, smart enough, important enough. Take it from me, I have the first-hand experience that when a parent chooses their own vises, no matter how unhealthy, over the simple obedience to the institution of parenting the child will never recover. The struggle of lacking self-acceptance is a life sentence.

As a child, alcoholics anonymous was like our prayer group except all we talked about was trauma. Scary, scary shit. Also, I was told at a very young age that my role in the family dynamic was that of the hero. The stress of being the hero would take its toll therefore I could easily fall into addiction or a complete mental breakdown. That small children’s classroom at the top of a tall set of creaky wooden stairs where I could view the hospital where my father lay, drying out, I was told I would fail. I would seek to prevail in whatever I did but that would backfire. I was doomed? Am I? I still wonder. As a teenager, I developed a new survivalist habit that when someone told me I couldn’t do something I made sure to. I’m proud of that trait which I continue to maintain today.

I began writing this blog-post on a sunny summer morning convinced I was writing an uplifting, lesson learned, happy to be turning fifty-years-old peace. Now I see that I require some time sitting on the pitty-pot. Yes, the pitty-pot. Another term I learned from my father’s AA meetings.

Pitty-Pot: a noun describing a metaphysic place where one sits when instead of purging toxicity one dwells in it. Some people sit on the potty-pot their entire lives. Some take a short break from their otherwise optimistic lives to hone in, dissect, and remind themselves how much life sucks. A short visit to the petty-pot can be useful. Like listening to sad songs after a breakup. It allows you to feel the shit. Embrace the shit and own it. Then, hopefully, you woman up and move on.

I struggle daily, as many of you do, with self acceptance.

I don’t have a clue how to love my body, my hair, nor my skin. How am I supposed to embrace fifty-years-old with a positive outlook? The delusions of my mentally ill mother still replay in my mind. I was told that youth is beautiful. And if you are beautiful you will be loved. I was told I could use beauty to get whatever I wanted in life. None true. So what is true?

I’m not young anymore. I must be ugly and unlovable. The wrinkles, the sagging skin, the pigment from too much sun exposure, and my light green eyes that can barely tolerate any brightness. All figments of age and loss of youth and beauty.

Who the hell is the brilliant one who started this cycle? We cannot blame the media alone. Was it the twisted minds of lustful men and the weak minds of women who allowed it? A superficial power trip for both. Was this the scope of their search for truth and love? Is this all they thought they were worthy of?

Finally, the last lesson learned I will share with you today is intolerance. We, I, must be intolerant to the stench and the trap of the emotional manure around us. It’s thick with guilt, oppression, and corruption. It will molest you into doubting yourself and your worth. I must be intolerant of its blatant attack no matter how quiet and sneaky. Verbal sticks and stones attempting to plant shame into my mind. Sometimes my own voice sometimes a coworker, stranger, or family. It may sound like words of concern or intelligence but beware their sole purpose is to pedestalize themselves while knocking me down to a place of comfort for them.

Silencing my voice sometimes necessary as I am shielding myself from its brutality, alleviating its muddied shit. Yet, there are times when my voice is imperative to free me from its power delivering me to my own. Knowing the difference is the challenge.

Alas, I am almost fifty years old and yet I still dream in the moments of the most fear and pain of my youth. A nightmare of a speeding car with no breaks has recurred throughout my life and I struggle with accepting my own beauty and intelligence as enough. Alas, maybe this is what I must accept. This is me.

Love is beauty. Love is happiness.

I commit my second fifty years to serve love. Not only loving my husband and the truest form of love for my wonderful child but also loving me. My body, my hair, my skin, and choosing a career that I love. Loving my home and spending as much time here as possible. Loving my life and allowing others to love theirs. To only judge me in order to better my existence. To press my awkward insecure self to woman-up and persevere.

Love is beauty.

I vow a sustained embrace of my world and who I have become. Ensuring I live past fifty-seven will also require a continued mindful approach to my physical and mental health. This is the kind of beauty I want my daughter to see and to emulate.

I will break the cycle of the shit of this world within our family first with love. Hate is ugly.

Happy early 50th birthday to me.