On the day of my 36th birthday, I was the most ready I had ever been to turn a new age. I know that, for most people, by the time they’re in their mid-thirties, they’re not necessarily excited to turn another year older. But I was so ridiculously ready to say goodbye to 35.
When I was 35, I broke my leg, I was diagnosed with breast cancer and had to have my boobs removed, and my engagement ended. Needless to say, I was ready to leave that year in the past.
I woke up that morning truly feeling different. Not necessarily older or wiser, but just refreshed. Like something new was beginning, and I didn’t need to hold on to all of the crappy feelings from the last year. The feelings weren’t all gone, of course, but something about my perspective on them had changed. I was no longer going to let those things hold me back or dominate my thoughts. It was time to let them go, in a sense. And time to trust that good things would start happening in my life.
And that’s what we get to do in this life, right? We declare it’s time for a new chapter, and then we just turn the page. The calendar says it’s a new year of our life, so our life changes.
If you’re rolling your eyes at that - yeah, so was the universe. Because that is not exactly how it went when I turned 36.
A few days after my birthday, I took a late afternoon nap in my living room. Shortly after my alarm went off, something dark floated by and woke me right up. After a few minutes of trying to convince myself it was nothing, I realized that it was, unfortunately, a bat. I was living in a very rural area, so having a bat sneak into your house isn’t unheard of, but this definitely wasn’t something I was mentally prepared to handle on my own, when my ex had just moved out of my house a couple of weeks before.
But here I was, 36 and faced with a new challenge. I followed the internet’s advice, turning off all the lights and opening all the doors. And while I waited for the bat to escape, I tried to calm myself the heck down.
Eventually, I went to bed (after a very thorough search of my bedroom to make sure nothing was flying around in there), assuming that the bat had made its way back into the outside world.
The next day, I slept in and then began making rounds of phone calls, because clearly I needed to talk through my bat encounter (and my next therapy appointment was a few days away).
I was in the middle of a call with my cousin when I noticed something out of the corner of my eye. The bat. This time, not flying around, but just sleeping on the wall (my house was a log home, so it was resting on one of the logs). It had not flown out of the house last night as I had hoped.
It was so tiny, and almost adorable. But just because you’re cute doesn’t mean you get to live in my house.
So, while it did look quite angelic sleeping there, I knew I had to get it out. It was time to prove to myself that single, independent me could handle hard things.
I opened my front door and grabbed a broom. I gently nudged the sleeping bat with the end of it. Which, yes, did wake it up. But didn’t get it any closer to getting through the open door.
I wish you could have been a fly (or bat) on the wall in this moment, because it’s hard to describe the chaos that ensued. The bat zoomed around my house, rapidly changing directions, as I just kept swinging the broom and screaming, “GET OUT!” Turns out, bats can neither see nor follow shouted directions.
Eventually, it landed on the ground at the top of my stairs. This was my chance. I grabbed a box and an extra piece of cardboard. I slowly crept up the stairs, and, when I got to the top, threw the box on top of the bat. I slid the cardboard under the box, successfully trapping my new bat friend.
Or so I thought. As soon as I lifted up the box to bring it outside, the bat jumped out and landed back on the floor. So I tried again. And the sneaky bat escaped again. This was going really well.
Eventually, I succeeded. I ran outside with the box in my hands and returned the bat to the outside world. Finally. My bat saga was over.
Now, depending on how much you know about bats, you may be thinking that I missed a step. What about rabies? Well, after doing some anxiety-induced Googling, I became worried about this, too. Because here’s a fun fact: did you know that you might not even know if a bat bit you? Their teeth are so tiny that they could bite you in your sleep and you’d have no idea. Cool.
So I frantically called the local Animal Control office, who unfortunately told me that, since the bat was in my house while I was sleeping, I should probably go get rabies shots. And I was definitely going to heed their advice, because, remember, 36 was going to be a good year! I was absolutely not going to let rabies take me down.
And here’s another fun fact that you will hopefully never need to know: getting rabies shots is not just a one-time trip to the emergency room. It’s a series of four shots that you get over two weeks. So, after spending way too much time in hospitals during my 35th year, I now got to become a frequent flyer at another hospital. At some point, they really should start handing out hospital loyalty cards, because if you’ve been there that many times, you deserve something besides another bill. I mean, they knew me by name by the end of those two weeks (though the front desk ladies mostly affectionately referred to me as “Bat Girl”).
By the time I had received my last shot, it was no longer July, my birthday month. I counted that month as a write-off, and decided that, as of August, my 36th year was going to be good.
Well, I’m now writing to you from age 37, which I turned last week. I wish I could tell you that the rest of my 36th year was easy and uneventful, but that was not the case. Now, I’m not writing this to complain, because the year was full of a ton of joyful moments, and the surgeries I had at 36 were much easier to get through than the ones I went through at 35. But it was certainly not an easy year overall.
My 36th year included a cancer scare (and I’m grateful to say it was just a scare - I still don’t have cancer! But it took about 75 scans and tests to figure that out), actually beginning to grieve the end of my relationship and the loss of my dog (he’s still alive! Just sadly not living with me), and spending hours upon hours torturing myself over the decision of what to do next with my life.
I now think of my 36th year as being the recovery year after 35. 35 was the year when sh*t went down, and I spent 36 in the aftermath. 35 was when things fell apart, but 36 is when I admitted that to myself and actually started healing from it all.
So now I’m 37. And I’m not making any bold statements about how this is going to be my best year ever, and nothing bad is going to happen. I’m done challenging the universe.
But it does feel like a new chapter is beginning.
Two months ago, I moved back to Seattle, where I grew up, and where my dad and brother both live. I sold my house in the rural town I was living in, and am now renting an apartment (and so far, there have been no bat sightings). In this new city, I’ve been making new friends, putting myself out there for new opportunities, and trusting that things will happen when and how they’re supposed to.
I woke up on my 37th birthday, not feeling like I was a new person, or like I was wiping the slate clean after the previous year - but I did feel different, in a way.
I thought back to myself on my 36th birthday, a girl who was newly living alone, and had so many questions about who the heck she was after everything she had just gone through. There was no way to rush the answers. She just needed to live through it.
And this 37-year-old me? She still doesn’t have it all figured out, but the questions don’t feel as big or as heavy. I’ve lived with this post-cancer, post-broken leg, post-breakup version of myself long enough to know more about who she is, what’s important to her, and how she wants to spend her time.
On this birthday, I realized I finally feel like ME.
A year ago, I thought turning 36 meant entering a new chapter. But turns out, there were a bunch of pages left to finish before I could skip ahead.
I have no idea what’s to come in this next chapter of my life. But whatever happens, hopefully it doesn’t involve bats.
P.S. If you would like to watch the chaos of me getting the bat out of my house… There is video evidence.
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