Thirty used to be a scary number to me. It was my deadline, the age by which all of the wonderful things I set out to accomplish in this world would come to fruition. At eighteen, this seemed reasonable. I was your average starry-eyed, head in the clouds, high school graduate. Then I got married, had a couple kids, and those puffy white plumes started crashing down on me, and the stars? Well, they began to shrink, falling further and further away until reality slammed me into the ground, repeatedly. My dreams were still there, but I had to learn the hard way that reaching them would take me on a vastly different course than the one I had planned out. It’s been a journey, and not always a pleasant one, but I wouldn’t change my voyage for anything because it’s made me who I am. Here are a few things I’ve learned along the way.

1. Some Friendships Aren't Worth It

All of us have had that friend. You know the one I’m talking about. He’s the one that can’t be happy no matter what is going on in his life. If he won the lottery tomorrow, he’d complain about how much they were taking out for taxes. He sees life through a lens of never-ending bitterness and negativity. You’ve tried to help him. You’ve sat him down and given him advice until your ears started bleeding from the constant sound of his whining. It’s like he’s stuck in a glass case with a thunderstorm but outside its sunshine and rainbows. You’ve thrown brick after brick of reality at his enclosure but it won’t break, nothing is getting through.

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So why do you try? People like this will never hear you. They’re too stuck in their own murky existence. Sure, they say they need help, but they don’t want help. They want to complain. They want to sap you dry of all that positivity and drive you’ve got going on. They want to bring you down to their level and, if you keep falling into their trap, they will. Helping a friend in need is one thing. We all go through low points and need help standing back up but, when the person you’re trying to help has a habit of falling into pits that were completely avoidable, to begin with, it’s time to cut that person out of your life. You’ve given them the rope and tied it to a sturdy tree. Move on and let them climb out on their own. It’s probably what they really need anyway.

2. Love Isn't A Fairytale

Do you remember your first love? You know, the person you thought you would never be without. The person who was perfect in each and every way. The two of you were going to ride off into the sunset together and conquer the world. Only, you didn’t because love doesn’t work that way. Even if you’ve managed to stay with your high school sweetheart up until this point, I can guarantee that things will change between you. Why? Because you will change. The things that you value in a partner will be different by the time you’re thirty. I’m not saying that you and your love will break apart necessarily, but your relationship will change. That super passionate, fairytale feeling is great, but it will fade. You will get frustrated, annoyed, and angry with each other. You will argue, cry, and get so upset at your soulmate that you will wonder why the two of you ever got together in the first place.

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The two of you are separate people, with separate personalities and separate lives, regardless of whether or not you share everything. It doesn’t matter how much you love someone, eventually, that person will get on your nerves, especially if you see him/her every day. There’s nothing wrong with this, it’s normal. What matters is how each of you react when this happens. Will you give up when things get hard, or will you respect the other person enough to give him/her the space that’s needed for growth? Sometimes this space will lead to the two of you parting ways and you have to be okay with that. Loving someone means putting their needs before your own without sacrificing your principles and values. This can be a painful lesson to learn.

3. Forgiveness Isn’t For The Other Person

Each of us can recall a time in our lives when someone broke a piece of us. Maybe we were taken advantage of, maybe we were taken for granted. Maybe someone hurt us in ways that no one should ever have to go through. It doesn’t matter how we got hurt. The point is, we got hurt and we loathed this person for shattering our rose-colored view of the world. We got angry, swore we would never allow another person to do what he/she did. We built a wall, one slightly jaded brick at a time. We became little more cynical, a little less trusting, a little more judgmental. Pretty soon, we were surrounded by nothing but our own pessimistic thoughts and anger.

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The thought of forgiveness never crossed our minds. They didn’t deserve our forgiveness. They deserved our anger. This we held onto. This we reveled in because, without it, we would be forced to face the pain of what they’d done. We’d be forced to address our own fragility and that was unacceptable to us. Forgiveness isn’t something you do for someone else, though. It’s something that you do for yourself. You have to let the anger go in order to peer into the holes this person created when they hurt you. This is how you heal. Forgiveness is letting go and moving on. It’s allowing yourself to feel the pain and work through it so that you can be a stronger, better person.

4. Change Is Inevitable, Growth Is Optional

There are going to be people you meet along your path that astound you with their ability to stay the same. These are the ones without ambition, the ones who are still out partying every night well into their late twenties when everyone else has grown up and gotten their lives together. The world has swept past them but they’ve somehow managed to remain standing still. The reason this is so unfathomable to you is because you never even had that option. Life happened and you, like all other responsible adults, rolled with the punches. These people are the exception, not the rule, and I can assure you their lives aren’t as awesome as they make them out to be. Partying may be the only thing they have.

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The thing is, change happens whether we want it to or not, even for the aforementioned party guy. The difference between that guy and you is that you chose to grow as well. Growth is a choice, one that everyone makes on their own time-frame. There may be things in your life that you haven’t let go of yet, perspectives that you’re still stuck in, but the fact that you’re moving forward is enough to be proud of. Don’t get bogged down because you haven’t made it to where you want to be yet. You’ve made the choice to grow, and sometimes that means baby steps. You have to be patient with yourself.

5. Some Days It's Just Gonna Rain

It never fails. You wake up, all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, ready for the day to begin. Then, you get toothpaste on your new shirt. Then, you spill your coffee because some jerkwad decided to cut you off. Then, there’s a wreck and it takes you an extra hour to get to work, which you arrive super late to. This is a rainy day. They happen and they aren’t fun, but being able to let the water roll off of you is a lesson that everyone has to learn.

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No one likes days like these, but they offer us an opportunity to switch gears and change our perspectives. Yeah, the toothpaste on your new shirt sucks, but it can be washed. Getting drenched in coffee is nobody’s idea of a good time, but at least you didn’t hit the jerk-wad. Showing up an hour or later for the job that pays the bills is a bit embarrassing, but there's a fair to good chance your boss has been there. Some days are gonna be difficult, that’s just life. There are never bad days that outweigh good ones, or vice versa. A day is a day. How you choose to view and experience that day is up to you.