Yesterday was my birthday.

Which can be an exciting day in anyone's life.

And usually is for me.

Except... yesterday I turned thirty.

I moved from my twenties, to a new decade. I took one step closer to the end of my life. I walked through the door of a new stage in maturity and adulthood and left behind whatever years of youth and immaturity I still clung to.

Melodramatic enough for you?? :)

BUT seriously! I had a really hard time with it. Even this morning, as I was struggling to open my eyes and face the day, I thought, "Ugh.... now I'm thirty."

It was NOT a pleasant experience for me. I mean, the day was great. And I felt so incredibly loved. But the number-change brought a dark cloud over EVERYTHING.

And you can shake your head at me and scold me and remind me that this is when things really start to get good. And I KNOW all of that. I REALLY do. But... I'm still having a hard time exchanging twenty-something for thirty-something.

I'll get over it. Don't worry. Give me another day at most. I'm not the kind of person that holds onto things for very long... Or at all. But I am the kind of girl that suffers from severe anxiety over the most mundane and common place issues.

Like birthdays.

If you think I'm nuts for struggling to cope with my thirtieth birthday, you should have been around for when I turned twenty! Tears galore. I think it was actually worse.. Much worse. I hated not being a teenager anymore.

For all you psychologist majors out there, I think this is what they call a Peter Pan complex. (Also, I'm not sure if that's a real thing. I saw it on an episode of Seinfeld once.) :)

The only difference between turning twenty and turning thirty- besides the tears- was that this time around I was perceptive enough to see all the blessings that drove me here. When I was twenty, I didn't know better. Ten years later, I can lift my head up and let hindsight be twenty-twenty.

And WOW.

Ten years means so many great things.

Looking back, even the horrible, hard, emotionally-traumatic things can be embraced as blessings. They mean something now. They brought me here. The shaped me, molded me, forced me to grow up and become the adult I'm supposed to be. They propelled me forward on this particular path when a thousand different roads lay before me.

And I like this road. I like where it's headed. I like who has surrounded me and chosen to walk these steps with me.

No, I don't just like all of that... I LOVE all of that.

My twenties were big. Really big. I'm proud of how I got here. Even if it wasn't all easy or nice or happy... I'm so at peace with the last decade of my life and where it's brought me today.

It makes me nervous for the next decade. After everything that happened during my twenties, what could my thirties possibly hold???

What more is there??? (She asks nervously, while the heavens line up more than I can handle)

I'm nervous, but I'm also excited.

I've had a few people tell me to just relax and enjoy my thirties. My twenties were just plain work from start to finish. Whether it was finishing college, or getting married, or losing my dad, or having four kids, or spending years of my life facing rejection in the publishing industry... I mean, that's a LOT of hard-freaking-work.

And a lot of times it was painful! Both literally and figuratively.

But there was also such reward through all those struggles.

The thirties have a LOT to live up to.

Thankfully, in this decade of life I'll be wiser, smarter, calmer. Maybe not all the time... but hopefully at least some of the time.

The thing is, I'm not good at sitting back and relaxing. I'd much rather be doing.

So bring it on Thirties. I'm not all that happy to see you, but I'm sure we'll get to know each other despite my reservations. And I'm sure you'll be awesome.

But also hard.

I'm sure you'll be exciting.

Even if you're sometimes scary.

I might be entering this new decade of life dragging my feet and kicking and screaming... but I also hope I leave it the same way. I hope it surpasses anything I could have anticipated or expected. I hope it kicks the Twenties ass and I am as reluctant to leave my thirties as I am my twenties.

I hope I tick off as many big things in the next ten years than ever before.

It won't be easy. And it will be a LOT MORE hard-freaking-work... but that's what life is. Life is work. There's no getting around that.

So, I'm accepting this challenge. And I'm embracing this change.

Yesterday, I felt an irrational amount of shame with the number 30.

Today, I'm wearing it like a badge of honor. I've made it this far... let's see where else I can go.