Yeah, just got me some Internet, y'all, so I'm a bit backlogged. * * * * * * *
Fortune cookie say: Good things are coming to you in due course of time.
Well thank goodness. In advance.
Twenty-six. One score and some pence none the richer I sit with a heating pad pressed upon my back.
Old in bone aches and spirit, wiser from the woes of one’s bloodlines (I suppose), and still wondering if there is such a thing as a quarter-life crisis or if this is all some dark-ish cloud I’ve kept drawn over myself … perhaps like the kite I never could quite fly.
Last year I woke up on this day overjoyed to have it to share with my sister, as it’s been so rare over the course of our lifetimes that we’ve ever shared our birthday together. I remember being the last one to wake up and totter into the kitchen where I found my mother.
“Thank you for giving me life!” I chimed to her.
She, Kim and Rob all laughed at my crazy self. This morning I woke up somewhat sad not to share it with my sister, and as I tottered into the living room my mom’s eyes brightened as she said right spirited with a big ol’ smile, “Happy Birthday, Sapphire!” That made it all better, as I could reply, “Thanks again for the life, and for hanging in here with me.”
Non-milestone birthdays are odd occasions I think. Last year I toasted myself to low car insurance; at 21 I waltzed into the convenience store to buy a six-pack just because, and at 20 I thought I was grown. This year I’m really starting to feel old. A college chum surprised me today with a call – we talk about erry six months – and we talked about ourselves for a good hour or so, and for some reason she kept saying, “I always thought we’d have our shit together by now. Isn’t this supposed to be the prime of our lives?”
At first I just laughed it off, but after about the third time of her saying it, I just shrugged and replied something to the effect of, “Well I don’t know who says that stuff, but obviously I ain’t one to claim it. I’ll get wherever I’m supposed to be when I damn well get there and I presume not a moment before.”
She persisted by insisting that we went to college, we are smart, driven people, what in the world is happening and where are we going wrong. Suddenly I felt like a slacker; I just really didn’t give a fuck. It was an odd conversation because I sensed that her entire diatribe was her way of asking me what was I doing with my life. I could hear in her tone that my path thus far was not what she expected, and at first I felt embarrassed, but as she talked about clubbin’ and such, I asked myself what do I care about what she expects?
I consider that a key point in the right direction for me, because as some of you have rightly noted, I’m just on that cusp of being a people pleaser, but these past 4 years with my dysfunctional family have taught me that it just ain’t worth the effort to go about tryin’ to please and appease folk. Granted, an I-don’t-give-a-fuck attitude isn’t the best option either, but I’m feeling my way somewhere through this middle. So when she inquired what was going on, why had I moved and what was I going to do next, yada, yada, I found myself supremely disinterested and changed the subject.
Twenty minutes after I hung up with her I found the fortune cookie and chuckled to myself at its rather fortunate timing. Do you believe that signs are everywhere? I do.
But back to being twenty-six. I’m proud to kick off the swift slide to thirty for all y’all. It’s an honor to have you call me up and say “you first” like I’m the lucky bastard who drew the short straw.
Today has been a jolly good day. I didn’t do much because I am still sore from moving and have spent the majority of the day lounging in some fashion trying to stretch out the various muscles that are tight and coiled like fresh springs on a screen door. But it was good to just chill out and reflect on the past year and my hopes for this one.
That fortune cookie reminds me of something my dad always says, whenever he would suspect that I was too caught up in trying to keep up with others and their expectations. “Never hurry, never worry.” It’s nice to feel that I can finally make sense of things he says, because before I always thought he was trying to get in my way somehow, but now I know better. Neither one of those things serves me well, and fortunately things always, always, always have a way of working themselves out for me just in the nick of time.