L’s post really got me thinking about the things I recognize in myself as I get older. I am NOT a yoga person, but not for a lack of trying, I swear it. I have a good friend who went through teacher training, and I went to several of his classes. My sister is also into yoga and brought me along once or twice. I just have a problem sitting still, which is why I choose to run. I don’t want to hold a pose and contemplate, I want to pound the pavement and work through my thoughts. This is why I run outside and NOT on a treadmill. So L’s backbend issue is to her as other things are to me.

Turning 30, at first I didn’t notice anything different. Phew, I thought, I feel the same. Then, slowly but surely, it creeps up on you.

I am not going to lie, I have been getting a lot of gray hairs, and they are coming steadily. I am not surprised by this; I take after my dad and he went gray at a very young age (in his 20s). For now I simply pull them out. I know this is probably bad to do, but it has been my tactic in this battle. At some point I am sure I will dye my hair, but I am not ready to admit defeat yet, and honestly it hasn’t moved on to the stage where it is super noticeable. At least, I think that.

Another thing that I’ve noticed about myself getting older, which is hard to explain, is just a feeling I have about my body. Not a psychological thing, but the actual feel of my body. My skin feels different to me. I feel like there has been this strange shift in me, and it isn’t something that I can outright see, but I can FEEL it. The first time I noticed this was a very ominous situation for me. Literally, one day I woke up and felt different. The physical feel of my skin, touching it, it just felt different than it had the day before. I called my sister and talked to her about the situation, and she might have even laughed at me a little. She is a few years older, and now it was my turn to understand. She has spent years telling me about getting older and also about pregnancy & children, but like many things in life, you can’t always fully understand and relate until you go through it yourself.

Don’t get me wrong, I love, love, LOVE being in my 30s. These have been the best years of my life. I know myself better than I ever have, I am in the best shape of my life, and I am happier than I have ever been. I mean, I ran my first marathon at 30, and I am getting married about two weeks before my 33rd birthday. So, I’ll take the gray hairs and strange shifts.

Even though a lot of people think their 20s or even their high-school years were and are the best and it’s downhill from there, I challenge them and say it only gets better.