24

This week I turned 24. It has simultaneously been the most carefree and the most weighty birthday I can remember. It has absolutely, without question, been the best. Why? It lasted for three days. It was hot and sunny. It contained ritual after ritual and plans and surprises. There was good food.

In contrast to birthdays past: no one cried who I had to comfort. No one I cared about hurt each other. No one I cared about hurt me and didn't notice. Nothing happened to me that became a Medusa in my life that has followed me, snaking, for years since. Nothing happened to me that exacerbated my loneliness. I was not terribly irresponsible or hungover. I did not spend all (or any) of my time trying to make other people happy to the detriment of my own happiness. I wished that other people who I loved were present, but not to the exclusion of my enjoyment of the moment. I was thoroughly present in myself.

Friday, Mark picked me up from a coffee shop in Ballard and we sped off into the dry flatlands of the east. We arrived at a creek by a waterfall with gargantuan fallen trees, their root systems forming half the walls of our hollow. The water was glacial and the air was hot and dry. Our campsite was in a red dirt glade. Drew and Riisa and Haley were there and they had pitched a Birthday Tent. They had a Birthday Beer waiting. Riisa emerged from the woods with a Birthday Crown of ferns, berries, Queen Anne's lace, goldenrod. We sat in chairs by the water. We jumped in the falls - well, I didn't, I jumped from the low-rock-side because I don't trust my body, the water was so freezing I nearly immobilized in 30 seconds and could barely get out. My eyes turned blueberry blue and my skin porcelain in those moments and four hands reached in to aid me. Night came and Jesse and Alex arrived and dinner Mediterranean and rich over the fire flowed. Drugs I had never tried all of a sudden just happened. There was a birthday ceremony on the small pebble beach by the stream, rocks clapped over my head and a lighter presented in front of my face to blow out; a version of London Bridge entitled the Birth Canal Dance. Everyone glided. We undulated from our own vast worlds back into each other's. We shared in the fire and the rocks and the trees and the 98% full moon and the waterfall. I had a deep and satisfying sleep. In the morning we fried french toast in bacon grease and lazed all day. We sang along to pop songs on the car ride back. I had to spend 45 minutes washing all the dirt off.

Then there was dancing. Soul dancing. I had a dress of which 75% of the torso displayed the face of a roaring tiger, fangs bared and green eyes glowing. Other friends met us at the Lo Fi and Eleni brought me a perfect book. I went to bed late but fairly sober and full of black bean burger and feeling loved.

Then there was brunch. Of deep-fried Italian pastry, cinnamon roll, stuffed berry French toast, sweet Walla Walla potato and onion, pineapple orange mimosa, coffee, heat, sunshine. Then there was napping.

The spell broke last night with a string of awful dreams. Not nightmares, exactly, but, terrible, realistic dreams of bad things happening in my life and to people I love. People moving away and people's hands being damaged in deli-slicer accidents and people losing hold of relationships and sanity. I woke up at 4 in the morning and today is the first day of fall in weather and spirit and I have been doing laundry and drinking cold weak coffee, and it is cloudy and cool.

I said that this birthday felt weighty as well as revelatory, and what I meant was I've been having a lot of Feelings around it. Not about aging exactly, although passing into my mid twenties does feel more like a passage than anything else has, like maybe I am Supposed To Be Doing Something (the people around me who I trust and care about belie this, so I'm not too stressed about it). No, not aging exactly, but more...my fears are different than they used to be. Somehow, this year, somehow, I've had a different set of crises and difficulties and I've settled into myself in ways and I've become secure in some things. I've been trying to parse through this in letters to friends. I feel less terrified, now, of my propensities to fall in love fast and hard and long and strong with people and places. Because guess what? Those things aren't going anywhere. And I feel less terrified of my Madness, because that may shapeshift, but it isn't going anywhere either. And I feel less ashamed of some ways that I live my life, vacillating between solitary and hypersocial, unusual for people my age, and the labyrinthine way my brain works and the labyrinthine conversations I conduct. And I know that there are people who will move in and out of my life or stay in it in the long haul who will accept these things about me and perhaps love me for them, even more if I don't run from them in myself. And I accept that it is a rare thing to find a friend who loves me as fiercely as I love them, or knows how much I do. And I feel fine, not scared, about that. It won't change.

One thing about this work I have been doing, and one product of my Self Care Crisis of the winter (and also, I suppose, just the past few years of evolving self care crisis), is that it is impossible to survive trying to "fix" oneself. All you can do is fix how you react to the things you find bad and scary in yourself, until you flush those feelings out.

So that has somehow worked, against the odds (too cerebral, too anxious, too untrusting of the self, of the good faith of others). And now, older, my fears are different. I am afraid that I will never be forgiven for being far away. And I am afraid of the next transitions in my life, which will undoubtedly arrive and undoubtedly be difficult. And I am afraid of losing things and people (that's not a new fear, but it's pronounced by the way that people drift with age, and distance, and hierarchize relationships and prioritize those who are near to them). And I am afraid of doing something terribly irresponsible in my work.

But those fears are the fears of an older person, no? I talked to Eleni the other day and she said, "It seems like you are ready to figure out what you want to be doing." And, yes. I don't know if I will ever figure out what I want to be doing, but I am ready to ask the question and keep asking it, and keep doing things and at least finding temporary answers, and it is not something I am afraid of anymore. And maybe I will find something long and strong that I want. There have been many surprises.