As I turn thirty (shudder) I take inventory of my life.

House, check
Husband, check
Child, check
Job, check
Book deal, check.

I should be jumping for joy and on my knees every second of every day thanking God for all the blessings in my life. And I am thankful. At the same time, I wonder who the heck I am. All my life I have been someone’s something. Their daughter, her friend, his girlfriend, his wife, his mom but never just me. I think I am myself when I write, but I write from the point of view of a seventeen year-old girl. Now what the heck does that say about me? I have a theory. (You know I love the theories!)

When I was seventeen, I loved a boy and music with all my heart. And I mean every last ventricle. (I love him still but that’s neither here nor there.) He loved me too, as much as a teenage boy can love someone. And music was my life. Chorus, Musical Theater, all of it. Things with the boy ended, I was betrayed by a ‘friend,’ and ended up in the auditorium with slit wrists. Yes I know, but that’s not the bad part. At the suggestion of a therapist, I was pulled out of chorus and enrolled into the work release program. That hurt more than losing him. And every day when I would leave, I had to walk past the chorus room and hear them singing. It was like a knife in my soul. I think it’s still there.

Anywho..my theory. I don’t think I ever changed emotionally again. I grew older, but in my head, I swear, I am still seventeen. Ask anyone I know and they will back this up. I am that girl that says things she shouldn’t say and does things everyone else is thinking about but won’t. So now I’m thirty and I want to know who I am, or who I would have been if that didn’t happen. Would I have gone to Berklee and been a Musical Therapist? Would I sing at church? (I don’t sing in front of people anymore.) Would I have waited for him?

That’s my mission for the year. By the time I am thirty-one, I want to know without a shadow of doubt who the hell I am.