twenty-one.

It’s my birthday tomorrow. 

 

According to the clock on my laptop, I will be twenty-one in thirty-one minutes. I’m sitting up.  I should be sleeping.   I am tired.   I have to work tomorrow.  I have a million things to take care of.   I should be sleeping.  I should be. But I am not. I am waiting.

 

Waiting for what exactly? I do not know. Maybe I am waiting for a phone call from a good friend, who is going to sing to me the entirety of the birthday song at 12:01.  Maybe I am waiting for the satisfaction of knowing that I turned a whole year older and didn’t die.  Maybe I’m waiting for my life to change, like if tomorrow, the old pain will leave with the old year.   Maybe I know that if I go to sleep, I am still going to have to face tomorrow sooner rather than later, and I don’t like what tomorrow brings. Insomnia doesn’t stop when it is your birthday the next day. It only seems to make it worse.

 

The fall has always been my New Year change.  October 1st is my New Years Eve.   It is the night that I fill with anticipation.   It’s the night that I make my list of all the things that I should do from now on- that I, of course, will never do.   It’s the night that I choose to tell myself to grow up a little more.   The night that I throw away an empty life, hoping to refill it with all the excitement and hope of someone who doesn’t know that what she wants, she will never get, and what she loves- will never love her back.  

 

I have always wanted to be stupid.  I thought that if I was ignorant of the world and what it wanted of me, then maybe the guilt of not doing anything would not haunt me, and I could my live life happy and free of it all.   I could soar on the wings of the unknown, and land at the edge of the world, never wondering or questioning, never caring.  But what stops me is the understanding that I know how cliché that last sentence sounded, and even I can not bear to leave it there.   But I will.  Because I don’t care anymore.  An old friend once said, “Fuck it man.”   And those are the wise words of the hour.  Of my birthday hour.

 

I am not unaware.  I am wise- or whatever I have been told.  I am capable of thinking.   I know everything that in this moment, I need to know.   And that is what kills me.  I am sad.   And I am pointless.  If only because I know that I am not doing anything to fulfill the dreams of others.  I am not adding to the chain of command, and I am not doing anything for the circle of life.   I am an understatement of my own failure.  I look in the mirror, I am twenty one, but I see zero. I am nothing but a little girl who still hasn’t found her place in this world.   Fuck. My mother was pregnant with her second child at this age.  That child was me.  And that child is a fuck up.

 

So this is my day.  My “special” day. The day that will feel complete, come the purchase of a new license and some fancy alcohol.   Fancy alcohol.  Not the kind of alcohol I drink from plastic cups at frat parties in Madison.  But that I am allowed to drink.   I honestly never thought I would be here.   Finally, there is no reason to punish me for my actions.  I am allowed to find out if I am an alcoholic.   And you can’t look down your nose and expect me to feel it.  You can’t expect me to know you exist at all.   But I will always remember what you said before. I will always remember what you told my friends.  You think I am crazy.  And I forgive you.   But I don’t forget you.   I never have forgotten.  Because you have not let me.  Your unwillingness to forgive yourself is what will haunt me until I learn to not be so sympathetic.  

 

The clock strikes midnight.  Happy birthday too me.  I check my phone.   I get a text message- from a friend.  I get a phone call as well- from another friend.  My companions.   The ones who never let me down when I needed them.  Who never stopped caring for me.  Who never thought that I would be fine on my own.   Who knew me better than that.  Who reminded me that if I only have 5 friends for the rest of my life, they will be the ones who are real and who know me better than anyone.  

 

This was never you verse me. This was never me against the world.  This year has been me and my friends living life, day by day, so that we don’t die.   So that we can stand up and move forward.  So that we can love.  I am so sorry that you thought I would make it without you.   And I am sorry that you found out too late.   I am sorry.  But now our relationship is forever severed.   If only because the trust is what is gone.  The trust has become the empty hole of our relationship, and I don’t believe you anymore.

 

I don’t know if that ever comes back.

 

I am twenty-one.  I never thought I’d get here. I never thought I’d let myself get here.   But I did.  I made it.  I am so dramatic I know.  But life is precious, and life is pain.  And I lived it. Sometimes I lived it alone.  Sometimes I lived it with people who will never be allowed in my life again.   And sometimes I lived through it with those that I will never let out of my life again.    I made it one more year.   And to the grandmothers who have lived, I know that life is always going to get worse before it gets better.   I know that life is not for the faint of heart.  I know that if you can’t take it. You get out.

 

Silly me for thinking last year was the worst year of my life.  Silly me for crying over spilt milk, when I should have saved my tears for the future that still lies ahead of me.   Silly me for forgetting that it can always be worse, and someone with my luck, always needs to carry around a block of wood.  Silly me for never explaining myself to anyone who did not ask.  But then again, if you did ask, I would have told you nothing.   Because honestly, I never cared if you did believe me. The fact that you didn’t ask me, spoke for you.  The ones who ask- Believe first. 

 

I’m not ready for tomorrow.  But I was not ready for today either.  But somehow through the tears and fears of what it could have and evidentially did bring to me-   I made it out alive.  I am twenty-one years old. For real this time. Younger than most, but older than many.  Prettier than some, but uglier than the majority.  Smarter than you, but not nearly as smart as those with experience.   I am a screw up.  I can’t hold a fake conversation without flirting too much, as if to lead you on.  I don’t know how to do long division with decimals, and I never wanted to learn.   I will probably starve in the future, because I know nothing of handling money.  Here I stand.  A fuck up. 

 

But still, with love, I will write my thoughts, and give them to those who will listen.