Third Graders get Tutors; 30 Year Olds get Chiropractors

I turned 30 last month, and while I am trying very hard to think of this as a new decade to accomplish new goals and find new opportunities for happiness, I can't help feeling like I have fallen behind. And why is that? Why do I feel that my lack of a husband, children, a mortgage, and, to be honest, a career, has put me behind the rest of my class? If I were in third grade and had fallen this far behind, specialty teachers and tutors would be assigned to my day to help me through and to catch up. They would find my deficiencies and help change them so that I can reach 4th grade. By summertime, I would be walking alongside my classmates to the end-of-school field trip feeling pretty smug. Oh, if only they could somehow tell us that nothing in life will ever be as cut-and-dried, black-and-white as third grade. Can you tell a third grader, "Hey, I am helping you out now, but someday when you are 30 and confused and stuck on a really hard problem, you are SOL." Sounds cruel, but wouldn't it be kinder in the end?

But back to my original question, have I really fallen behind? The truth is that I have made so many missteps in the last 3 years that I am not even sure which path I am on, let alone how far along the path I am, so how would I even know if I was behind?

I keep thinking that this is not a setback, but maybe that things are just a bit out of chronological order for me. Instead of waking up at 45 with kids and a mortgage and a husband who makes me nuts and panicking at the state of my life, I am pre-panicking. While I have been waiting for these to come along, waiting for the timing to be right, I have just had too much time to think. That is never good for me.

Marriage, babies, and houses have been dangled before me as the carrot to reach for for so long that I have just had too much time to study them. Lately, the carrot does not look so delicious. What if I don't want to reach for it any more? Was I reaching for the husband and the kids, or was I reaching for what I thought must come along with them: peace. Peace. The opposite of the turmoil and confusion and fuzzy-head I feel now. Do you get peace when you finally reach that carrot? Do the wheels start moving down the path again? What if, when I start reaching for the peace carrot (or maybe peace is a cabbage? Not sure.) babies and mortgages and husbands aren't an integral part of it?

I had to go to the chiroprator this week for some serious back pain. We were reviewing my X-rays and discussing my treatment plan, and my doctor pointed to a picture on a progressive chart that was labeled "Phase II: Decay," and said, "You are here, Jennifer." I stared at the word. DECAY. Wait, what? How can I be decaying already? I have not done anything yet! I have just been trying to do something. (It was all that reaching out for the wrong carrot; reaching is bad for your back.) The stress of trying so hard but never quite getting there has caused my body to start to DECAY. Decay is for death; it's what happens to your body right before it disappears into the earth.

But there is hope. They're sending in some help. The chiropractor, so kind and empathetic, is a 30-year-old's version of the tutor, the speciality teacher, to help me catch up with the rest of the class. He says, "We can fix this. We caught this in time. We can reverse it and make things better for you." So as I sit here looking at my life from the 30 year mark on my timeline, maybe that's the way to say it. I am catching the decay before it takes over. I can fix this. I can make it better.