Sadly, I've become a bitch.

I’m not sure how or when it happened.  I’ve always been strong-willed and independent.  I’ve always believed in being open and honest at all times, and just as much as I don’t like when others pick on people, I even more am frustrated by those that won’t stand up for themselves.  And I’ve always been opinionated. 

And I’m pretty okay with all of that. 

But lately, I’ve been extremely opinionated…about everything.  I’ve become weirdly critical.  It’s like it’s necessary for the world to run the way I think it should, or I find fault with it. 

Maybe I’m just cranky lately.  I have the age-old “This is not what I thought my life would be like by now” complex, perpetuated by sitcoms that led me to believe that when I was in my late twenties, all my friends would also be unmarried and childless, but we’d all be super-attractive, fun-loving, have lots of money, and live across the hall from each other in high-rise apartments in the big city.  Then before we hit our mid-thirties, we’d all fall in love with our male best friends and live happily ever after.  This is the glamorous life I’d envisioned, and looked forward to.  Cut to the present, where unlike me, almost all of my friends are married and some of them are even working on child #3.  We all look about the same as we did when we were younger, plus a few stray starter wrinkles and ever-so-rare grey hairs.  None of us have much money.  We don’t live in a big city, we don’t have high-rise apartments, and we don’t live across the hall from each other.  We still love fun, but now “fun” is something scheduled weeks in advance, for maybe a couple hours.  Gone are every-day get togethers or weekend hang-outs or camping trips or girls-trips.  Birthdays are often celebrated 5-6 weeks after the actual date.  Adult conversations are few and far between, and if with my friends that have children, the conversations are peppered with constant interruptions and heated requests to sit down, stop crying, stop hitting your sister, I’m on the phone, Please give Mommy a minute, do you have to go potty?, and I have to go, she just peed on the floors…

I feel torn between things.  Some days I feel like I want to go travel, see the world, save the world, and always be moving around, trying new things.  Other days I feel like I would like to settle down, get married, buy a house, and start a family.  And you know what?  I’d be happy at either, and I’d be good at either.  I’ve come around to actually believing that, despite my jokes.  But I’m not there yet, for either path, and I can feel it and it drives me a little bit crazy.  I’m in the holding area, the waiting room, in purgatory, in the in-between after you cut your hair short and you’re waiting for it to get long again, in the moments before the gun fires to start the race.  I am restless, impatient, and frustrated.  I guess that explains the bitchy. 

It’s like I’m at the end of a very long line, and I see everyone getting to go on this “Life” ride, and I still have a long way to go before I can join them.  I know I am going to get there, and I have to just wait my turn, and I accept that.  But it still feels shitty some days. 

I know most have probably felt this way at some point, so it’s likely my situation isn’t ground-breaking, complex, fresh or exciting.  I am sure many people think I should stop complaining and grow up.  And you know, I get it.  I annoy myself when I get down.  Who the fuck throws a pity-party for themselves?  Because life’s not perfect and you didn’t get everything you ever wanted?  Really?  No, really? 

Yeah, I recognize these feelings, too. So what we have here is someone that overall is incredibly blessed to have wonderful friends and family and to have been born with a roof over her head, a brain in her head, and a winning smile.  And she is still grumpy.  And she feels guilty about being grumpy. 

So what does she do?  Well, bitch, apparently.  But hey, it’s not like I’m not trying to make improvements.  I realize that overall it’s unhealthy to base my happiness and/or self-worth on others, either their opinions or their lives, and if I’m focusing too much on others, it’s probably because I’m not satisfied with what’s going on in my own.  So I fall back on self-improvement.  Read more books.  Work out.  Plant a garden.  Try to learn an instrument.  Try to learn a language.  With these things, my job, and helping a little with a couple weddings coming up, I’m actually quite busy.  Which believe me, is a good thing.  God only knows how much more neurotic I’d be if I had more time to sit and think. 

But I’ve still got to work on that whole “being critical” thing.  There’s a fighter in me that really needs to calm down, and learn how to shut the fuck up and smile and nod when a friend lets their husband make all the decisions in the house, or another friend makes (what I think to be) poor financial decisions, or another friend decides they want to marry their prison love.  I have to learn to feel happy when my friends tell me they are pregnant…again, or every last person around me gets married and I still explain to people I meet that I’m not married, don’t have kids, and don’t even have pets.  I know my life is good, and most of the time I feel it, too, but I’ve got to power through the times when I’m not really digging it.  I have to channel my own happiness to have acceptance about things I don’t understand or agree with.  Or at the very least, for God’s sake start practicing the whole “if you don’t have something nice to say, don’t say anything at all” thing.  I may have opinions about everything from mayonnaise to architecture to politics to assholes to Christina Aguilera’s legs, but if they’re not contributing something positive to the world, I don’t really need to share them.