A Greyhound to New York, plans for dinner with friends at Bryant Park, and an overnight flight from JFK to CDG – this is how I begin my journey to fulfill my 2013 goal of “Turning Thirty in France”. I fit everything I need in a carryon and a backpack, have a fierce new candy apple red trench for gallivanting around in 60F Parisian weather, and the seat next to me on the bus is empty. I’m off to a great start.

…so why have I been sobbing for most of the day?

Ok, maybe I haven’t been sobbing all day, but there has certainly been no shortage of tears with the occasional sob that throws me into a bawling rage. But yes, it’s been all day.

Granted, I started to see a pattern since I started a new birth control a few months ago. I noticed that I have one REALLY EMOTIONAL day, toward the end of my hormone cycle. (Last month’s was bad, as I found myself falling apart in my car….and in my bed, late into the night…feeling like I related to every Adele lyric that played from my iPhone.) But if that’s what I’m chalking this up to, then it’s about four days earlier than I was expecting it this month, throwing off my previously observed pattern. And sure, it’s not an exact science….but this also might be completely unrelated, and I might really be losing it.

I’ve been planning this trip to Europe for a year. Originally, with one of my best mates from college, we were going to spend a full month in Western Europe, traveling and photographing (well, he’d be photographing, anyway) The Netherlands, France, Switzerland, and Italy. Now, however, as my trip is in the process of being realized, I’m alone and spending a week in Paris. Which translates to me turning THIRTY – alone – in a foreign country.

Generally speaking, I’m fairly adventurous. And I love being alone. (Not that I always want to be alone, mind you, but I adore my “me time”.) So, although I’m trying to convince myself that I’m just a little nervous, that’s really not true. And this is different. This is THIRTY. If I’m baring it all, the ugly truth is that I can’t shake the nagging thought that being alone on my thirtieth birthday is indicative not only of what my life has thus been, but of what it’s destined to be.

I have cultivated some truly amazing friendships over thirty years – but not a single one of those friends lives in the same state as I do. Five years ago, I could have justifiably blamed this entirely on myself: I’ve never been one to sit still for too long. But now, mostly we just have very different lives. They have spouses and kids. I have a new trench coat and a roundtrip ticket to Paris. Sure, I have friends where I live now. But….would I choose to spend this milestone with any of them? Probably not. I’m more apt to take my brother, sister-in-law, and 2 nephews out to dinner to celebrate with me than I am to go get drunk with my roommate – which is precisely what she proposed when she dropped me off at the bus terminal. (I didn’t say it, but my thought was “Ugh, I’m not that much older than you – how is it that I’m too old for that shit?!”.) Besides, even with all my talk of amazing friendships, I still got ditched for this trip. I get it, I’m not mad, I still love your guts. This just isn’t college anymore – it’s the real thing, and unfortunately I’m still the one void of a relationship, any kind of a commitment beyond a rental agreement, and responsibility. C’est la vie – non, c’est ma vie.

Anyway, my sister jokes that I have a shopping problem, and that I’m perpetually on vacation. (She in fact said this to me about six weeks ago, and then posted the same comment on my fb wall this morning. She may not be joking now that I think about it…) What she doesn’t understand is that I have to fill my life with SOMETHING. Which in part explains the guys that I date, but never seriously. The projects that I start, but too often don’t finish. The obscene credit card debt that I continuously rack up, but will probably never fully pay off. I have nothing else – why NOT fill my life with traveling and clothes?

Ironically, with my approaching birthday, I’m beginning to understand that filling my life with stuff just for the purpose of filling it is not incredibly fulfilling. Call me Nick Carraway.

I digress. I’m sure that all I really need is someone to talk to and a shoulder to cry on, as opposed to my laptop and a neck pillow.

…also probably a different birth control. Damn Nuvaring.