birth until now
I was born 21 years ago today. As I started writing this, I realized I hadn't written a birthday blog before. Typical questions about how I feel being one year older, and I'm left wondering too. Being 21 doesn't feel much different from being 20, whereas each prior year felt like a blind leap from one to the other. I was re-creating myself each second -- I blinked and a year passed.
Eighteen was marked by total deconstruction of everything I knew until then, shedding my skin with each step I took into this new world. My world didn't suddenly open up under my feet as I believed it would. Rather, it was a palpable progression, only glimpsing the potential of what my life could become, bit by bit. Everything was blurred at the edges, as if I was never quite awake, quite aligned on the same frequency that everyone else seemingly was on. One step forward two steps back. It was a ghost year; I kept forgetting a year had passed and kept mistaking my age for seventeen.
My nineteen years were filled with repetitive guessing. Where had everything gone? Every day was abnormally empty. No more reconstruction was needed; now I needed to learn to sit with the quietude of adult friendships. It felt like I could truly count on no one but myself. I kept my hair the shortest it had ever been.
Being twenty felt more stable -- finally, the weight was lifted from my shoulders, and I could see, if not glimpse, the light at the end of the tunnel. My heart became fuller with each breath I took, with each leap that led to steady ground. This feeling still expands now, and sometimes wavers, throughout my twenty-one years.