I am turning twenty-five today. It is a weird age, and I feel like I’m prime for a mid-life crisis. I had an idea of where I wanted to be in life, and I am not there. I smoke, drink, don’t have my degree finished, but have debt to show for it, have never had a boyfriend – but quite a few boys I can call exes – and I feel exponentially lonely. I have done some good things in life, however, and I think I should take this birthday to reflect on my past and my future.
I have gone to school. I spent four years at an academically challenging liberal arts college. I forged a few wonderful friendships that I hope to have throughout my life. These friendships started with awkward conversations about wedgies out on the track, half-attempted cart-wheels on the common lawn, and last names forcing us to sit next to each other on a six hour flight to Manchester and to find out that our personalities mesh quite well.
I met so many animated and opinionated professors – people who are passionate about life and about teaching heathen students the complexities, lyricism, and hilarity of the English language. I took a drawing class. It helped me to realize that to draw what you see and what is really there are two completely different things. My perception colors the world so vividly and this was the first time I was able to focus on the world without it being tainted by that perception. That class helped to connect me to my mother who was unable to finish her own art degree. I do have wonderful people around me. There is no need to feel lonely, and I am an intelligent person with higher education under my belt.
Never-the-less I forget these attributes. I think it is because they are not me at my core. My friends help define me, help me to see different aspects of myself in a different light. My education allows me to better self-reflect and gives me more options to better myself. These do not fully define me and are not at the core of who I am. I was raised in America when education was a must. School was a release for me, and I did it well. I had friends, not many, but great ones. These attributes – education and friends – ruled my youth. I am needing to move on. And, there! I have found my core. Moving on is at my core. I have always moved forward, onward in my life. I moved past my contorted and unreliable childhood with my mother. I adopted and love my foster family. I chose to go to school out-of-state because no one in either family had been to that city yet. I jump into the unknown.
How do I do that now? How do I honor these things that have defined me for so long, and also open up a new chapter to my life? I haven’t made a positive and constructive life changing decision in so long. Goals are a good first step. I am currently single, and I would like that to change. I am in debt; I would like that to change. I do not know Russian, and I would like to. I’d like to visit friends abroad and revisit some old sights and venture forth to new. I’d like to have a plan to have children and to buy a house. And of course, drinking less and no more smoking will be the hardest.
These goals are scary too. Starting a life with someone else, or having children and moving on feels that much closer to death. My mother died at forty-five years old. That puts me already past the half way mark to death on her timeline. The funny thing is that death could come at any moment. I have known this my whole life. Death has been a close friend. Everyone has had someone die that they love, and if you haven’t, brace yourself. Putting off growing up won’t make death come any slower. It just makes your life that less full-filled when it rears its cloaked head. That death-rattle I heard at my mother’s bedside has a date marked for me. I just have to make its wait for my last breath worth it.
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