Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

It's just 2 days away. I have been completely pre-occupied with my birthday on Saturday. Not in a good way like in other years. In other years, I was busy planning all sorts of fun activities where I'd get to hang out with all of my friends. I've had some great birthdays. Last year was a little more low-key because I was just visiting eNYC, but I did have good dim sum and went dancing to bhangra music.

But this year, especially in the past 5 days, each day it seems to loom larger and larger. I really do feel like I'm about to die and I can't do anything about it. Like in my recurring nightmare where I'm speeding along in a car and I try to brake and have the pedal all the way to the floor and nothing happens. I feel trapped because I can't change it. On Saturday I will no longer be in my 30s.

I know life will not end. I know I don't look my age. I know it's more about how you feel than a number. But these things do not reassure me. 40 still sounds old to me. Not old for other people because as I age and my mom entered her 60s, 60 seems less old. But for me right now, I do not want to be 40. 30s are still a time of youth and people view 30 somethings as young. But 40? It's not young, it's middle aged. 30s still means youth in places like eNYC because so many people don't marry or have children until later. But 40s? People start to feel the need to reassure with "you're only as young as you feel". When you're 30 something, they don't bother with such aphorisms.

And I don't want the looks, the judgment of me as 40. Still unmarried, no children, no house, no car. By societies' standards (here, US, elsewhere), I am strange and possibly a failure. In Night of the Iguana, Deborah Kerr refers to herself as "an almost 40 spinster from New England" -- OUCH! Ok, that movie came out in 1964...before I was even born! I just don't want young people to look at me like I'm old. I feel young and I don't want to lose that energy that I get from feeling that way and from people looking at me that way.

I know I will get through it. I will face it. It will come and go and life won't be any different. And it might be a good thing to define myself less by age and looks and more by character and action and accomplishment.

The title of this blog entry refers to a cool novel by Haruki Murakami.