Cake, Flannel, and Teeter-Totters

First off, I want to thank everyone for the birthday wishes.  I hadn’t checked facebook since before my birthday, and when I got back to real life a couple days ago seeing all the love was wonderful.

Secondly, who the hell allowed me to turn 21?  What idiot gave me that permission?  Truly my actual age has not registered, as I still feel like I am 12.  And “ya ya,” you might think, “everyone feels that way,” but I’ll have you know that tonight I hung 30 hangers from my pockets so I could make it from my apartment to my car in one trip.

I’ve never been one for big celebrations, especially for birthdays.  What have we done to warrant such praise and affection, besides continue to exist?  I always feel somewhat bad about receiving gifts… “Oh hey, you’re still alive, have some cake and a flannel!”

I’m gonna enjoy the hell out of that cake and flannel, but the cake will taste a little like guilt.  But then once that goes away it’ll just taste like delicious.

For realisies, though.  How can a 21 y/o still be using words like “realisies”?  

We are all afraid of change in some way or another; growing older, having more responsibility.  But sometimes change comes so swiftly we don’t even have time to process it.  Suddenly you’re in college.  Then you’re thinking about career paths.  Then you are thrown into the real world and you have a house and a spouse and a louse (not really, I just wanted a third rhyme).  Everything seems like a blur in hindsight, and a giant, close-up, infinite canvas of spilled paint in the moment – cluttered and confusing and impossible to make sense of.

But, I guess, you see the borders eventually, and know that everything is temporary.  Every change, every hardship will last only for a fraction of time in the grand scheme of things.  Anger today is annoyance tomorrow, is a thought the next day, is gone in a week. 

Sometimes everything can seem so real.  Things you’ve only seen in movies or from your parents are suddenly happening to you, and you aren’t sure what to do or how to react.  Which is fine.  It’s fine to be clueless.  In fact, if you had a clue about everything from the beginning you would have nothing to learn.  I feel clueless about so much, every day, year round.  Just because I’m a year older doesn’t mean that has changed in the slightest.

And one thing I’m learning is that balance can always return, no matter how off-kilter your teeter-totter might be at one moment.  Just run to the other side and enjoy the second or two before it hits the ground again.