In exactly one week from tomorrow, I will be 26 years old. Just a number, and just a day... Yet it seems as good a reason as any to revive Ye Olde Blog.
In and of itself, 26 is not a big year. Everything is pretty much downhill after 21, and once you're over 25 you can officially be described as being in your "mid-late twenties," which I have yet to hear any of my friends cheer as a good thing. In fact, with the exception of one birthday I've helped celebrate this year (Robbie, Justin's brother, flew out to L.A. for his 21st), all of my friends met their birthdays with a healthy dose of groaning and general dissatisfaction with the idea of getting older and having no big birthdays to look forward to. Bah humbug, we're all grandmas. Sixty may be the new 40, but 25+ is the new 75. You might as well get me a walker, the way we all make it sound.
So 26. Yup. Not a big year, unless you count that walker I have coming to me... Or unless you look back on the year that I just had. You know, 25? Aka the year wherein I crashed two cars, graduated college, got engaged, got married, went to Hawaii, became responsible for all my own finances, bought a new car, and contrary to any post-graduation plans I made, became a My Gymer for Life and simultaneously bid goodbye to my BFF Jackie, and watched her walk away from the job I helped train her for. Oh, and I just got notice of my impending 10-year high school reunion. I'll pause if you want to reread that whole paragraph again.
To say that things have changed a lot in the last year is insufficient. I am a completely different person. At this time last year, I was cheering Obama and cursing Linda Bowen and her stupid project, planning a dance performance for school, and considering the merits of breaking into radio versus TV after graduating. Justin was my boyfriend; not even my fiancé. I had totaled the Solara and hit the Civic, and in order to punish myself was riding the metro to and from school and work every day... I was rekindling friendships with some and saying goodbye to others. And my mom was still speaking to me.
Perhaps all of these changes help to explain why on the eve of my 26th birthday, I am vacillating back and forth between feeling manic, anxious, depressed, sad, and overwhelmed. Don't get me wrong - most (if not all) of the changes I've incurred over the past 358 days have been good ones. I'm in a better place than I was last year, certainly. But it's a lot. It's been a LOT to take in, and perhaps I haven't given myself the proper time to sit and breathe and consider it all. By nature, I'm a reflective, introspective person. I talk a lot, and think even more. I write, I sing, I dance... I've always found ways to channel my emotions. But this year I just haven't had the time. Everything happened at such a break-neck pace it simultaneously feels like my 25th birthday was both last week and 50 years ago. I find myself looking in the mirror lately and, before I can help it, wondering "who *is* this person?" The eyes are the same, and the hair. But something about the face is different... Maybe it's the bad skin. Ohh soon-to-be-26-y/o-Grandma, get thee to a Dermatologist, health insurance be damned!
But yeah. There it is. For someone who eschews making transitions as much as I do, I sure did go through a lot of them. Yet here I am, with a huge year with life-altering changes under my belt, and at the end of the day I'm not entirely sure what to think. It's like my brain was a PC for far too long and now it's been upgraded to MAC OS. Really, it's for the best but it's too much to process. Server overload! Server overload!
So since my brain is waiting in line for service at the Genius Bar, my emotions have taken up the slack. And seeing as how coping was never my strong suit, it's really no wonder that I'm all over the map. Happy! sad. Excited! pissed. Social! lonely. Content! bored. Proud! immodest. ...Extrovert. It's like high school all over again, except without the Creek and without Dawson. Same high-strung emotions, same cycle-of-life changes that that tumultuous time brings, same acne. Just no late-night rehearsals and never-ending double entendre between friends. Well wait, nevermind... I still have the second part. ;-) Indeed, my life right now is a Kevin Williamson monologue addressed to no one.
But here I am. About to be 26, married, and with a new last name, and new family... Graduated with a B.A. but never even opened the package containing my 7-years-earned degree. In the past 10 years, I have made more friends than I have lost, but can't stop myself from mourning the losses anyway... and I am about to RSVP to my high school reunion.
I am also about to complain about my mile-long to-do list, when I look down at the mug I'm drinking my iced chai out of, and I can't help but smile ruefully... As the side reads:
"Once upon a time, there was a very busy girl with a tired yet hopeful soul. then, one day her soul asked her to stop... and just breathe. and so she did, and the girl and her soul live happily ever after"
-Maggie Lindley
Oh thank you, quotable mug, for reminding me in an ever-so-corny way of what I've been meaning to do for a year now.
