30 Things to do Before I Turn 30

The first 28 years of my life have been eventful. I've lived in 30 houses in 7 different states, attended 4 universities and a trade school, seen Paris, Mexico, Canada, visited 20 states in the US and served a mission. I've fallen madly in love a few times and had my heart brutally broken once. I've met and made better friends than any person has a right to. I've given up and tried again, discovered talents I didn't know I had, and weaknesses I didn't want to know I had.  I've worked as a teacher, pizza maker, shelf stocker, deli slave, personal assistant to a boutique owner, campus bouncer, a special needs nanny, an RA, a waitress in a tapas bar, and now a cotton candy spinner extraordinaire. I've skinny dipped, road tripped, yelled at the ocean, stared at the moon, laughed so hard I've cried and cried so hard I've had nothing left to do but laugh. I've seen vibrant rainbows, more beaches than I can count, new babies and old ladies, big cities, small towns, gorgeous countryside and trees that tower so tall and majestic that I would dare anyone to not be overcome with a sense of awe at the sight of them.

And now, I'm almost 30. I'm 29 in fact--today.

To give you just a small glimpse of what it's like to be "almost 30" and a student at an LDS university that only offers undergraduate programs I will relate the following: A couple days ago I was sitting, sketching and a guy I'd talked to a few times around campus came and sat to make chit chat. We exchanged stories  and laughs for about half an hour. By that point I'd calculated that he was probably 21 years old and I could see he was getting curious. I always ask people to guess my age when they ask and he came up with the usual guess of 23. When I, half grinning, knowingly revealed that I was just about 29 the guy hilariously half choked, then caught himself and tried to recover with, "Oh, congratulations" and a handshake. 

When a woman gets this far past the ominous, "menace to society" label she has two options. She can either bury her head in shame and spend her days pining for a man to make her an acceptable member of Mormon culture-- a wife, a mother, an adult--or-- she can fully embrace the exceptional thing it is to be so free, to know herself so well and to have so many doors open to her and enough sense to go explore them. When put that way it's hard to understand why so many of us settle for option A. 

I've decided the best way to celebrate the year twenty-nine is to cram thirty more "to do"s into my eventful twenties. They've been good to me, and when they haven't been good to me, they've taught me oceans of lessons I benefit from daily. I want to give them the fine farewell they deserve.

I have one friend I reach out to in my blackest of the black moments. She is infinitely patient, kind, positive, and gently nudges me in the best direction-- even when I don't want to hear it. She intuitively contacted me moments after The Mr. walked out of my life for good and never seems to tire of my sometimes spastic pleas for help in moments of desperation. In recent conversation about the demise of my marriage she said, "I don't feel like it was the end of something. I don't even feel like it's now a new beginning. I feel like it's the beginning. The start of your beautiful life." I feel like I am in a place in my healing where I am ready to more fully look forward. I can feel a shift in me where the healthiest thing to do for me now is to look ahead and build, and the best way I can see to do that this year is to work my way through the list I've compiled of thirty things to do before I turn thirty.

To share, or not to share?

Photo attribution here.

So, the other day this thing happened. I started attending Institute here, which I've really been enjoying. The first time I walked through the doors (thank goodness I was early and the class was pretty empty) this senior couple who had served in my singles ward here three years ago was setting up the class and they totally remembered me. They walked up with slightly puzzled looks on their faces and said, "Wait, didn't you get married?"

When I was in phase one I was very, very open about my matrimonial history. One, I'm an almost absurdly open person to begin with and two, the beast that is divorce had overtaken my body, mind and soul to such an extent that it really felt like I didn't have a choice. It was the only thing in my head to talk about. No matter how uncomfortable it got I just kept opening my mouth and out would topple comments like, "Oh yeah, my husband did that too," or "Yeah, well the first time I got married I wore a vintage dress, but I don't know what I'll do for wedding number two," or, "Oh my gosh, I know. Making out is my favorite. I love it, even more than sex!" As you might imagine, this lead to many uncomfortable moments in my small, young singles ward.

During my epic road trip down here which transitioned me from phase one to two in my Get On With Life plan, I pondered extensively the pros and cons of going public with the fact that I was once married. When an LDS person finds out another LDS person has been married and divorced, it changes the way the once married person is viewed; there is no way around this. Eternal marriage is such a deeply integral aspect of our faith that, especially while one is single, everything seems to be viewed through this three part lens of married, single or divorced. Once divorce is admitted everything in the life of that person assumes a new hue.

We divorcees can feel this shift, which is why so very many of us remain silent. The righteously indignatious part of me wants to buck this system, which is another reason I was so loud mouthed about my divorce in my last ward. It's kind of a shock when people first hear it, the "D" word, but my theory was that the more people I could expose to a real live divorced Mormon, especially a devout one, the more stigma would dissipate.

However, in  order to achieve this noble aspiration, one would need to take upon herself every awkward moment she could in order to break the ice, again and again and again. In truth, I'm just not strong enough for that. Also, through my deliberation on the drive I decided such an "in your face" approach is probably not the most effective anyway to change perspectives or break the stereotype of the bitter divorced lady. Better to let a person discover the elements of me as they come and allow my divorce to be just one more layer of my fairly complex life story. In the early moments it was impossible to believe, but the truth is, I'm a lot more than my two year relationship to a man with whom I no longer speak.

Having settled on a "need to know"policy for when to speak about myself,  I have also settled on the decision to anonymize the blog. You may have noticed. Many of you know who I am and mostly I advertise this blog through facebook, but we're at about 5,500 hits now and coming up as #3 in Google search for "divorced mormon blog". I'd love to see us continue to grow. I'd also love it if we could just go with my nom de plum Imogen Frowfrow (there's a funny story here, as you can imagine) as my name. Sometimes it's hard to have strangers know your story.

As for your decisions, because you will have many to make about how much to say about what and when, here's my advice (since you so clearly asked for it). When the moment is right, do not be ashamed to admit your experience. Shame and guilt are tools of the devil if they are not motivating us to change. We cannot change what has happened, and we should not allow ourselves to be shamed because of it. Hold your head high when you speak about your divorce. It (hopefully) has changed you, ultimately for the better and brought you closer to Christ. It's an experience many of us share in silence. Sometimes breaking that silence can be a powerful and right thing to do. Also, you have every right to protect yourself, to establish boundaries, to decide how much of yourself to share and how much to keep. There is nothing wrong with giving yourself a clean slate, and in moments it will be right to stay quiet, omit, or even mislead. Your experience as a married person does not have to define you. There is more to you than this. God will let you know which moment is which.