Here I Am: 37.

J, Bean and Buddy,

Today I turn 37. Thirty-seven. It’s hard for me to wrap my thoughts around that reality. Maybe if I say 37 all day, it’ll sink in.

When I was your age, 37 wasn’t even a blimp on my radar. Thirty-seven was just someplace on the adulthood map; like China, a place I could not explore because the airfare was too expensive and the rules were too invasive. And yet, somehow I’ve landed here, in this moment; at 6:13 a.m., I am 37-years old.

For me, this birthday is unlike any I have experienced before. It’s more than just a candle and a passing of 365 days where I’ve changed, accumulated more things and tried to make a plan to balance what I am supposed to want in life. Instead, I’m spending a lot of time thinking about the time and space of my being, trying to make sense of how I’ve arrived and knowing that only I get to decide where I travel to next.

The saddest thing for me right now is that this is not what I wanted for my adult life. Adulthood has all the freedom you’re dreaming of. You get to drive to the movies, you get to throw your clothes on the floor if you want, you get to decide what you want to eat for dinner, you don’t have to ask for gas money. But, for me, all the freedom in the world has added up to a mess I feel controlled by.

I tried to run as far away from controlling as I could, but then I created these circumstances that control my every action, my every thought and my every move. This is why I want to take the next plane to Fiji to find that simplicity I’ve always truly wanted.

I can tell you what I really wanted before I ever began moving forward on my own. I wanted a small home with a patio or a front porch with a table or a swing where people would be excited to join me, talking into the late hours of the night. I wanted to pull you in a red wagon and have family dinners. I wanted to gather people and tell stories. I wanted to show everyone that there is a big world out there full of love and hope and wonder. But in reality, I went after a career, a big house, lots of things in the garage and activities to keep everyone on the path they are supposed to be on. Then, my days became something I could not manage anymore. And all of me just kept trying to keep my head above the water for the next day.

I can’t say that I regret what has been given to me or the choices I’ve made. When I look back, I know that I made the best choices that I could have made at the time. I look at my life up to this point and know that I’ve done my best so far.

I also don’t know if I’ll actually ever be out of the mess I’ve made.

I’ve also come to the point where I know that the best I can do is sometimes not the right thing to do. I’ve become so taken by clutter and debt and busyness and a lack of real conversations that I’m wondering where my priorities or foundation has been.

I was taught that my “priorities and foundation” should be a career, my parents, a house, a spouse and children. I spent so much of my twenties searching for that, so much of my thirties managing that. But over the 365 days of being 36, I let that “foundation” fall to the side while I focused on accepting who I am, defining what I want for the next 37 years and hoping that I have enough time to accomplish all of it.

Birthday are, sometimes, like the New Year. A clean start and fresh beginning. Or at least it feels that way. The pounds are still there, the debt is still accruing interest, and the dishes are still sitting in the sink.

So, as I turn 37, I have decided that mourning the last 36 years of my youth is pointless. Maybe I’m old now. And maybe I’m just tired of the bullshit game that leads us all down this path.

Some people identify this as a midlife crisis. But I think it’s more of an awakening. We say, “Wait. What? No, this isn’t right.”

In my 37th year, I can invite my friends over to my broken deck to sit outside until the wee hours of the night; I can spend more time with you because my work is not who I am; I can hear the bugs and the birds when walking through the woods on my own; and I can even go to China, if I want to (well, that is, if the Chinese government lets me in). You know what, screw China.

Thirty-seven may just be a number, but I am 37.