My First Fifty Years

This is the year that I will turn 50 years old in July. My oldest son has been teasing me about this for the last few years. He likes to poke fun and ask what the world looked like before I could see in color or what was it like when dinosaurs roamed the earth. (Hinting that I was alive during that time, laugh out loud) 

I have been thinking about my accomplishments, my failures and where I messed up at as a parent. I have been thinking about how none of those things were linear. My age is linear but not the steps in which I chose to do anything. An example of that is I finished college in my early thirties and that is when I began my career as a paralegal. I continued to attend school and earned my bachelors degree in my late thirties and received that degree in two years because I hustled. I bought my first home after the age of 40 and didn't have my first child until I was 27. I figured out there were no set rules by which I had to accomplish anything within a certain time frame and that only society placed those antiquated rules on us. 

Any one thing that was an epic fail to me in my life was usually a learning experience. An example of that is I have been married in my life twice and both marriages ended in divorce. The first marriage ended in my twenties and was hard but I managed to get through it. The second divorce began when I turned forty and it was harder because I was older. Something I did though in the second marriage was finish my schooling so that if the marriage didn't work out I would have a profession to fall back on. When I divorced the first time I had not finished school and did not have any real great skills but fast food and retail experience. I made a promise to myself that if I ever found myself in that situation again I would have an education to fall back on. 

My children are grown now and I think about where I messed up while I was raising them. I should not have fussed and yelled the way that I did because I did not want to hit them the way I was hit as a child. I feel bad about it now because my oldest has brought it up. When he does speak on it I apologize - that's all I can do because I can't go back in time and change it. I am truly ashamed of the yelling and feel bad about it now and I also felt bad about it when I was doing it. 

I have become a caregiver to my parents since I have gotten older. There have been times that I resent it. There is a lot to unpack when it comes to my parents. I am thinking about making a series when it comes to this but I have to think on this a little bit more.

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