Birthday report card

Ah, my 11th birthday article. This year I had three birthday cakes, which I ended up not eating and giving to my friends’ children instead. All parties ended by 11 p.m. and the day was capped with an episode of Law and Order.

I’m 31 and this is ridiculous.

“When did we last feel that we were on top of the world on our birthday?” my friend Marco commented as we looked at our friend who was celebrating his 29th dancing on top of a ledge a month ago. Last time I was on a ledge was 10 years ago. It was a ledge with a cage on it. I was living large. Our friend was swinging a bottle of champagne and just thinking he was the Filipino version of Prince looking for his Apollonia for the night. For the less trained eye this may have been annoying. To us though, we looked at him with a mix of nostalgia. When did we stop learning to have fun?

As we awkwardly bopped our heads in the club, I realized that I hadn’t been the joyous birthday douche for quite a while. It was actually painful to be in the club; we didn’t know anyone and we didn’t know the songs. I only knew the Glee song that they remixed into a house version. My, how people grow up fast, both for the accelerated tweens in Herve Leger-ish bandage dresses to our former geriatric playmates who slept at 8 p.m.

Birthdays remind us of many things. It reminds us of the things we have done and still have to do. Mistakes and triumphs to keep us inspired and humbled at the same time. Matters of the heart that complicate our lives and make us feel forever like teenagers. More and more we realize that the decisions we make are more on the forever horizon. And yes, we are reminded of the darker things like dying and a slower metabolism.

This birthday is a glaring reminder that everything I do this year will mold my “forever.”

I made a lot of important decisions in my 30s. My free pass 20s long gone, I have no more excuses to be dumb.

I’ve decided to get married, learn the boon and bane of using detergent with bleach and scattering Santa Maria Nouvella potpourri all over the house so it will keep me from smoking inside the house (the mix of the two scents is migraine toxic; those nuns who made the potpourri were on to something). These uxorial duties have replaced the polemic social minefield dodging of my 20s. In my 30s I have decided I won’t be a Liz Taylor and marry eight times. I have decided I will be like my mother and dedicate my life to my husband. It’s so old-fashioned that it’s new. I’m scared of those cold career wives who have to schedule in their husbands. They are the reason escort services have thrived from recession to recession.

That’s one half of my life makeover. The other has to do with me being an interesting woman that both my husband and I could love. And here is where the shoe drops.

Some friends of mine just disappear into their wallpaper and bake cookies. They lose themselves. It’s actually a scary willingness to just disappear. They are the polar opposite of the career wife. I’m Buddhist when it comes to wifedom, I long for the middle road, and hopefully the path of least resistance.

I was once quite content being the woman who dated boys so they could get into clubs. True love does not come with this careless ease unfortunately. In my crash course of being a loving wife I learned that: I’m not always right, I need to compromise even on house décor and tendentious talk is to be expected from pedantic concerns to world affairs.

I’m just really finding myself again, or rather recalibrating. I think every advent towards a decade does that (20s is fun, 30s career, 40s husband, 50s divorcing husband, 60s younger man) to a woman.

I am about to become a wife but deathly afraid of having babies. I continue to foster an unnaturally close relationship with my two dogs and creating gimcracks in an attempt to delay some diaper duty.

I’m at that mothering age, I know. Even my body is telling me. Yes, that biological clock exists. But I’m still scared. What if I give birth to a serial killer or what if I can’t get over the fear of breast feeding? It will foster years of self-loathing.

I think I’m in some sort of living purgatory when it comes to being interesting. I remember Sofia Coppola once said that she tried to do everything — fashion, photography, acting etc. She only delivered mild results in her endeavors. I guess right now I’m just waiting for my Lost in Translation moment. Whatever Suffragette theories there may be about being an adult woman, I still don’t have it. Then I’m comforted by the fact that Oprah, my idol, is still lost herself and emotionally eats. Just like me.

Like any chick in limbo, I have taken upon the confused woman craft of jewelry making (other popular choices are interior design, purse designing and catering).

I admit I’m still mired with insecurities. Some cultivated by exposure to mean girls and some just from being a little girl stuck in a 31-year-old body. In some way we all stay little girls.

This birthday has been all about facing fears and what to do with them. If Picasso had a blue period, let this be my gray period. As certain as my decisions are, where it will lead will be uncertain.

As a consolation, at least my dogs won’t judge me.