If you give me just one night, you're gonna see me in a new light...jmayer

XXXXX

(5x5)x2

All the cliches.

It's just a number

50 is the new...

Better than the alternative

To say my emotions are mixed this birthday would be an

understatement.

Am I glad I made it... sure. He didn't, my mom only made it to 51.

Has the journey to get here been as I dreamed, not at all.

Is today how I envisioned it, also not at all.

When I was turning 21 I sat down with ideas to write a book about what had happened to me in that year leading up to turning 21, and how what was supposed to be an exciting and benchmark year had turned to crap.

My then relationship was ceremoniously destroyed when the man I was engaged to was convicted of a white collar crime that derailed his future and ended ours. The slow, painful demise of that relationship coincided with my senior year in college. I was trying desperately to finish to graduate and to figure out my next steps.

Graduate, find a job, find an apartment.

My immediate family had already relocated to Florida.

Florida was never my plan, even back then, I was a planner.

Fate stepped in, I have to believe, and before the summer of my 22nd year began I was in South Florida.

Within a month I was gainfully employed as an artist, and within six months I was introduced to the man who would become my husband.

In 2 years my mom would be gone, and that time I had in Florida was a gift, not in my plan, but clearly in "the plan".

I recount all of this to say that from 25 to 47, life was on balance, as I had planned it.

Happy Marriage, great friends, good jobs, home ownership.

Now at 50, I again find myself looking back at the year or so that preceded this one wondering if there is a book in there. These experiences of death, mourning, grief, recovery, setbacks, joys, discovery; can I say anything that hasn't already been said better, by better?

Can the events that shattered my existence two and a half years ago and the subsequent journey I have been on since inform, console, affirm, someone else's experience?

Can the process do anything more for my journey then the exercise of writing this blog has done?

I've been thinking about turning 50 for quite some time.

Never in my plans did I intend to turn 50 without him. Not living in Philadelphia. Not starting over. Not without love in my life, not a partner.

And yet, here is where I am.

Decidedly happy in Philadelphia.

With new friends and old friends showing up.

Open and hopeful that this year "the plan" will bring love.