30 Things to Do Before I Turn 30

I have created 30 goals for myself to reach before I turn 30 and I have five years to do it!

1. Grow a garden of fruits or vegetables and eat them
2. Own a dog
3. Go to a music festival
4. Learn to drive stick
5. Own a sari and know how to wear it
6. Go on a spontaneous trip
7. Skydive
8. Visit Zion National Park
9. Take a road trip across the United States
10. Ride a train overnight
11. Take a cooking class
12. Get professional, classy nudes done
13. Visit Thailand
14. Win a chance contest
15. Stay in a 5-star hotel
16. See the Grand Canyon
17. Ride an elephant
18. Go to Patagonia
19. Visit Yellowstone
20. Eat at a 5-star restaurant
21. Get paid to work full-time for a magazine, literary journal, publishing house, or etc.
22. Publish another book
23. Take a "Girls Only" trip with female friends
24. Visit Japan
25. Take a nude drawing class
26. Go on a cruise
27. Live in another country temporarily
28. Adopt or have a child
29. See (in real life) all seven continents
30. Pay off a loan and own something big

Dear Mom: 25 Reasons We Haven't Spoken

I turn 25 this month and we haven't spoken properly in years. You wonder why. Maybe these 25 reasons will shed some light for you.

1. For not leading by example when it came to being a good spouse, mother, and sister so that I could learn from her
2. For taking the love of my sisters for granted
3. For not making the time or putting in the emotional effort with me and being upset when she isn't rewarded with an "I love you."
4. For wanting to be my friend instead of my mother
5. For leaving 4th Sister at home on the evening before Easter with a pot of boiling eggs on the stove and sneaking out so that she could party
6. For telling 4th Sister to stop crying and "not to do this to her" when Sister called on Easter and asked where Mother was
7. For never getting mental health help herself
8. For making me feel less of a person because I did get mental health help and medication
9. For not going back to college, despite her constant lamenting and the several appointments I made for her with the admissions and financial aid office
10. For refusing to cosign my student loans so I could go to college because she "couldn't afford to burden her credit" so that month later she could get a boob job (which she got reversed for another couple thousand)
11. For taking credit for my accomplishments because she birthed me
12. For inviting all my siblings (except me) to sleep over when she first left our father and explicitly telling my siblings that they could not tell me where she lived
13. For taking my only physical photo I had of our complete family, making a flimsy photocopy, putting it in a broken frame for me, and then losing the original
14. For complaining about all the sacrifices she has made for us (like buying herself new clothes) in order to guilt us into complimenting her
15. For making me take care of my father after his father died
16. For telling a friendless, teenage me that "This is why no one likes you" during an argument
17. For never answering her telephone when it was important and when we needed her
18. For not talking to me about sex appropriately and not being open to talk to me about sex
19. For making me believe every word I said in our family home was recorded on secret tapes by my father and anything negative I said could be used against my mother in court at any time.
20. For forgetting to take care of the kids when she fought with my father
21. For leaving me and my sister to fight with my father so she could go on a smoke break
22. For never taking the time to sit up and talk to me at night when I had a nightmare and then getting mad when my dad did
23. For being jealous of me
24. For blaming her lack of accomplishments on her choice to raise children
25. For blaming everyone else (except herself) about the outcome of her life because it wasn't what she had imagined. And for making no effort to improve that life.

But the biggest thing, the most frustrating and hurtful, is that you haven't apologized for even one of these things.