Listen up, bee-yotches. In my last post, I gave a eulogy for the past incantations of me. It was surprisingly hard to do especially as I’m in the midst of grieving for her/them/the past/all the years lost/winter being over, but I needed to have some temporary finality on the subject. And, since I’m a writer, I find that I figure things out best by writing about them.
Now, today is my birthday. Longtime readers know that I have a tempestuous relationship with my birthday. I disliked it as a kid, positively loathed it through my twenties and early thirties as it was a nasty reminder of the fact that I was, yes, indeed, alive in body and that I was a year older with nada to show for it. In the last five years or so, I had been slowly working my way to being neutral about my birthday. I didn’t love it, but I didn’t hate it any more.
Last year, I returned to struggling with it, and it’s been even harder this year. Why? Well, first of all, it’s a round number–40. Now, I have never cared about my actual age. In fact, at the beginning of the year, I just say I’m a year older in order to prep myself for my birthday. Of course, then when my birthday arrives, I sometimes get confused as to how old I really am, but that’s neither here nor there.
40. That’s old. Or at the very least, middle-aged.
I fixate on certain things (no, really?), and apparently, 40 is one of those things. I keep staring at the number as if it’s an alien being with three heads. It doesn’t look anything like I feel. On the one hand, I wasn’t taught healthy ways to navigate the world when I was younger, and I stayed frozen in time for fifteen years. So, on that hand, I feel very young, as if I’m just learning to walk. On the other hand, I’ve experienced things that I sincerely would not wish on someone I loathed because the way back is just so long and arduous. I feel as if I’ve been alive forever, so on that hand, I feel very old.
40? How can I be 40? What the Hades happened to my twenties and thirties? For that matter, where are my aughts and teens?