It's my party, so I will cry...

My birthday is around the corner. Not a major one, just the one before the big one. The big 4-0 is taunting me. It's leering at me in the makeup mirror every time I peek. It's sneering that I can't stop the clock. Forty is going to come in just over 365 days and nah, nah, nah, nah, nah...there's nothing I can do about it.

I admit it: I'm scared shitless of getting old. I never realized it, or never really thought about it for that matter because "getting old" seemed so far away. I can look in the mirror and still see my fourteen year old self imagining myself as a grown up. Now, I look in the same mirror and can't believe this is what I was waiting for.

I want a refund. This wasn't the show I had hoped to see. I believed everyone who told me I looked so young for my age and that I always would. Maybe I do look young for my age, but inside I feel like an old soul.

It's not just vanity that drives my disdain for this birthday. No, I thought I'd have gotten so much more accomplished by this point. I remember when my 30th approached, I was so calm, cool and collected about that birthday because I had reached so many goals I had set for myself.

I had graduated college, done some traveling, was excelling in my career, happily married and on my way to owning my first home. Hitting thirty was a hurdle I leaped over with flying colors.

Maybe 40 is so hard because I don't feel like I've had any goals in the last decade. The last decade. That's a long time, ten years. One quarter of my whole life and nothing worth noting. Yes, I've had two wonderful children. I don't discount that. But having kids isn't much of a goal. It's a matter of having some perfectly timed sex. Plus, my body is so fertile like the banks of the Nile, Maverick's sperm just needed to be dusted over my willing-and-able slutty egg to reproduce. My egg hung out the red light and screamed that my uterus was open for business. So, even that was not much of an accomplishment of a personal nature.

And if you still need more justification, my big 4-0 present to myself is a surgery. Not fun botox or lipo, or even a tummy tuck. No, I get to treat myself to a full hysterectomy. Say goodbye to my uterus and other lovely women parts. Say hello to heat flashes, and hormone therapy. Oh, can't wait to meet that sexless, hairless, vaginally dry woman! She'll be a blast.

My point is, if it's my party, I will cry. I really don't want to acknowledge this birthday,or even the next one for that matter. I'd like it to pass over and not exist. Like an off-leap year. It's much more fun celebrating my friends' birthdays. Especially for the ones who are older than me.