for oakland county
both of them
I turn eighteen years old tomorrow.
An adult.
Chris Evans also got married.
Lots of big life changes happening at the same time, apparently.
Olivia Rodrigo dropped an album about growing up, and as I played track after track, I couldn't help but think that many of her emotions were ones I had felt years ago -- and overcome. I had the startling revelation: have I outgrown teenage angst?
Someone out there call my mother...I think I'm all grown up.
It's funny -- when I was younger, I hated that my birthday was on September 11th. It was such a disgusting day to be born, my existence a brutal reminder of its own impermanence. Everyone was in mourning, every flag at half-mast, and there I was, with the audacity to cry and need milk. Later, there I was, with the audacity to bring in cupcakes and wear cone-shaped cardboard hats. Now, here I am, with the audacity to buy a lottery ticket and go axe-throwing.
My mother claims my biggest flaw is that I'm petty. My instinct is to disagree with her -- me? I'm so selfless! -- but in my heart of hearts, I know she's right, because as a child, I would spend hours on Wikipedia, clicking on links and scouring the news, trying to find something bad that happened on my sister's birthday, too. Misery loves company, or something like that.
I am (and always was) perfectly aware that as far as traumas go, this is by far the least worth mentioning. Spend enough time studying history, you'll soon find everyone's birthday is marred by something awful -- Stephen Hawking died on Albert Einstein's birthday, which also happened to be Pi-Day. That's more a cool coincidence than a great example, but you get my point.
These days I don't mind so much that my birthday is the accidental equivalent of dancing on graves. I've grown up enough to realize that 9/11 had nothing to do with me at all, and the most I can do is try to be a good thing that happened on September 11th. Now, my birthday sorrow is more trivial: no good restaurants are ever open, it's always at the beginning of the school year before I've made any friends I want to spend the day with, and more. My gripes are more philosophical: I reject the idea of celebrating myself, maintaining that birthdays are more a celebration of death than life. I feel time running out, even though every part of my future beyond the next two weeks is a murky black blur. I treat myself like a child -- hey little one, did you eat a good breakfast today? Good job! -- and get lost on the way to the bus station. I'm so incredibly full of youth, but not in the rejuvinating and inspiring way the world always glorifies; rather, youthful as in immature and lost, precocious without any real wisdom.
I'm also happy in the subliminal way that just kinda feels like peace. I keep my dorm clean and show restraint while grocery shopping. I go after things I care about, and am conscientious consumer of media. I call my mother everyday and do laundry every Saturday. I can laugh when my engineering roommate accuses me of selling my soul to capitalism and having coloring sheets as homework. I squash lantern flies and tell the cashier I don't need plastic bags.
All this to say: I think as we age, everything we experience gets smaller in magnitude. The kind of thing that would've had me on the floor of Kroger, screaming in the cereal aisle, a decade ago, now just sorta feels like life. Euphoria becomes happiness which becomes tranquility, and we realize we're not looking for everything, everywhere all at once, but really just something.
There's this Demi Lovato song called Substance. In it, they sing "am I the only one looking for substance?" a double entendre that is woefully aware of their history with addiction. I think, once I die, if you slice open my skull, those words will be etched into my brain. I think that might be true for you, my dear reader, too.
But I digress; I guess I started writing this entry with the expectation that some wise words about the good 'ol days will come pouring out of me -- after all, this is pretty definitively the last of them. As I usually do, I just ended up waxing poetic about youth as though I'm not still young, then closing off with some musing yet slightly stirring thoughts about the universe at large. I'm nothing if not predictable!
There are clear divides in my head -- moments that feel like the start/end of something, mostly because I need a framework to conceptualize my existence, since "endless march towards death" is a little grim (even for me). I always thought 18 would be that -- but it's not, not really. I mostly just feel like playing Seventeen by Alessia Cara and then 18 by One Direction as 11:59 becomes midnight. I feel like finding an outfit for the Eras tour, even though my show is a year away. I feel like watching Selling the OC Season 2 with my sister and calling everyone on it a psychopath. I feel like starting a scientific journal that only publishes inconclusive data with my best friend who lives across the country, because it's been far too long since we've had a project of our own. I feel like sounding off in my friend group's group chat because why on earth is Chris Evans married? I feel like eating my father's oatmeal and ordering falafal from the nearest Mediterranean place. I feel like talking to myself in the shower and pretending I'm rich and famous. I was recently invited to an exclusive showing of Netflix's new limited edition adaptation, All The Light We Cannot See, and in the Q&A session afterwards, the director asked the author (Anthony Doerr): "Most people spend forever trying to write a perfect sentence. How is your book littered with thousands of them?" Doerr responded by saying that, "there are a million ways to frame a thought. What makes it the 'right way' is all a matter of perspective". It's a little bold to consider myself a writer perse, but I often feel that: are my words meaningful? Well-reasoned? Beautiful? Perhaps that's why I write the same ideas over and over again, as perpetually fascinated by the ideas of youth and nostalgia now as I was a decade ago. But to quote Sarah Kay, I'm trying my best to get it right this time around. So if this is the last entry I ever write about how much unavoidable and inexorable trepidation comes with merely being, allow me to be as concise as I know how to be:
After seventeen years of living -- I feel like myself. And, well, isn't that something?
Comments
Post a Comment