My birthday is in a little more than two weeks, and I’m turning 27.  For those of you who are like me and were (or still are) obsessed with Sex and the City, you’d know that everyone has a “scary age”.  Scary ages are a certain year that has  signals you’ve reached the “unknown,” or you realize your mortality, or you simply acknowledge that you are no where near where you “should be.”

Twenty-seven is my scary age.

I have been dreading 27 since I was in Junior High. In fact, when I was 13 I used to pray that I would get cancer at 27 so that way I would die young, and fabulous, engrained in people’s minds as beautiful, vibrant, full of life and promise. I stopped praying that at 15 because I realized that it was a very selfish prayer. My brilliant and handsome husband would most likely be devastated by my tragic death.  So I stopped praying for early cancer.

The really ironic thing is, a) I totally don’t have a husband (which, at 13,  I never would have seen that one coming) and 2) I just had a cancer scare last month.

I haven’t actually been able to pin point what about turning 27 scares me so badly. I’m sure part of it is the ceaseless reminder that I don’t have as much figured out as I thought I would. My boyfriend turned 30 in August. Right before his actual day, I’d asked him if he was scared. He very coolly responded with, “Well, I would be, but I’ve already accomplished all of the goals I set out to accomplish…so not really.”

F-word.

Thanks boyfriend, now I really feel like the clock is ticking, (T-minus 3 years!) and I have no clue what my goals even are. And of course when you’re standing next to a guy that owns his own business, gets asked to speak at conferences about technical jargon most people can’t even comprehend, and occasionally gets written up in TechCrunch – sure there’s no reason at all to panic.

Hyperventilations aside, there have been a few things this year that I have really come to know and appreciate. And despite the fact that I used to pray to die, it is nice to acknowledge that I am growing.

Cancer, Lay-Offs, and the Living Situation from Hell

Last month had to potential to have lots of bad events, in fact, the whole month could have been deemed a failure. For those of you who have know me long enough, you’d know that I am no stranger to horrible life altering changes. In fact, they are called my early twenties.

First things first, last month I found a lump. Ladies, you know what I am talking about. I can’t actually tell you that I felt dread when I found it, I actually thought it was a gland. It wasn’t until I was in the Chiropractor’s office that I realized what it was. He was telling me that I had a swollen gland at the base of my neck, and I say, “Oh yea, I have on in my boob too. Maybe I’m fighting a cold!”

Immediately he says, “You don’t have glands in your breasts…here let me feel.” Before I know it, his hands are all over my girls, giving me a good old fashioned rub down. It is there you realize that Chiropractors are doctors, but then again, they aren’t really “doctors”….eek.

Post-accosting, it dawns on me that this might be serious. I make an appointment to get checked out by my Primary Care physician. Mentally though, I keep telling myself that it’s nothing, that I’m going to go in there and they’re going to send me home.

Except she doesn’t just send me home. Instead, she makes a slightly concerned face and says that she needs me to get an ultrasound. She could have just told me that I have 3 days to live, because that was basically what I heard. And you know, it turns out that in that moment I didn’t really mind the idea of having cancer, it was more that I didn’t mentally prepare to have cancer, so it really caught me off guard.

This moment began a pattern with me and my team of doctors over there in the Breast Cancer center. Each appointment I would show up, thinking to myself, “Jenni, this is really nothing, they’re just going to check it out and send you home.” And each and every time, I would get all worked up, anxious and crying from the needles and incisions, and then some doctor would walk in and wrinkle his brow. The nurses would rush out of the room, and come back with another doctor, and within moments they were asking me to put on my shirt so they could tell me what was going on, and proceed to break the news that I needed more tests.

And again, I was completely surprised that I was blind sided every time. I almost wanted to say to the doctors, “No, see you don’t understand. I can handle the fact that I might be dying, but you people need to prepare me a little better. Instead of telling me that it’s nothing, and then making the concerned face, I need to you to tell me that it might be something so I can at least plan for it.”

After several weeks of assuring myself it was nothing, only to be asked to come back for more tests, I was running a bit raw.  I mean, I’d had been accosted by my Chiropractor, had cold jelly poured on my boobies by a little Asian woman, had a doctor right out of med school take pictures of my lumps, sat in the waiting room sobbing, and at one point had one doctor tell me to calm down because, ”We cannot position the incision properly to get samples with your chest heaving like that. I need you to stop crying.” And after all that I had to wait a WEEK to find out my results.

Now, all this equals not fun, but as all things in life this was not the only hurricane in my life as of September. That week was the same week my employer had to lay of 15% of our work force. I’ve never been in a “start up” environment like this before, but I can tell you, it’s a totally different ball game. I’ve been through lay offs before, but lay offs were “just business,” a little rough maybe, but it didn’t feel personal. This time was so much harder.  When you watch the very people who laid the bricks in the foundation of a company pack a box and hit the door – it’s almost like a death in a way. Our whole office felt like we were mourning people who had literally died. It was awuful.

And finally, my home life has been terrible. Anyone whose lived with roommates know living with people can turn really very ugly, and this situation did…really bad. I don’t want to say too much about it; I’m not looking to slander, but just to say that the additional tension of a terrible home life was not the greatest timing for this week.

Now, here is the interesting part: in a week where I had potential for complete chaos: disease, loss of a job, complete destruction at home, I had a thought just come to me while talking to my mom on the freeway. I said, “You know what mom, I. Am. Ok.”

It was as if all of the painful and rough experiences over the past seven years came flooding back – lay offs, loss of relationships, moving around the world, learning other cultures, struggling to even find the corporate ladder – much less climb it, they were all there. And it dawned on me that in every single of of those moments, I had survived them. I had found my way. Yes, maybe with bruised knees and tears on my eyes sometimes, but I found a way to get through it anyway. And not even that, but right now my life is actually really fabulous.

I think I said to my mom, “Mom, I need you not to freak out about all of this. I’ve realized over the last few years that can be tough as nails. And you know what? I can handle cancer, I will be ok if I get laid off, and I know how to handle immature destructive people. What I simply cannot handle is the suspense of not know if any one of those things is actually going to happen or not. It’s not a matter of being brave in the midst of pain, it’s a matter of making through the suspense.”

Now I realize that I could have been having a VERY optimistic moment. I don’t want to pretend to know what it actually feels like to have cancer. But in that moment, it was a realization of how much I have grown in the last few years. It was so nice to have the confidence of knowing that you could look at pain in the face. To say, “You may be tough, but you know, sometimes I can spit nails.”

Where did THAT Jenni come from!?

Needless to say, my results from the lump came back negative. I still have to have surgery, but it’s completely non-threatening. Also, I was one of the few who got to keep my job. Which, I won’t lie – sometimes feels harder than those who had to leave, but man I cannot tell you how grateful I am to still be working for my company. And the roommate situation? Still not good, it’s very tense,  but I’m working it out like an adult, and reminding myself that at one point in the near future, she will actually move out. And that seems pretty good to me.

I almost feel like life made a mistake. Historically, I should have been the person who got the shaft, the triple wammie of bad news: roommate, job and health.  But suddenly I feel like I am that person who walked out of the grocery store only to realize they’d been given WAY too much change.  What are you supposed to do? Go back and say, “Excuse me, you let me have too much. Please take some back.”

Hell no. You get in your car and you drive. And you desperately check your rear view mirror to make sure they don’t come after you.

Maybe that’s what growing up is really all about. It’s not really about having a “scary age,” or accomplishing your goals, getting a new title at work, having people take you seriously, or having a husband. Maybe it’s really about just getting to an age where you realize that you can take life by the balls if you have to. And it might kick you in the guts, but that you won’t actually die from it. That change can actually be a VERY good, exciting thing.