Yesterday, June twelve, two-thousand-six, I turned twenty-five.
The strangest thing about turning a quarter of a century is that I feel it.
I feel like I’m twenty-five.
I don’t know exactly what that means, but I do know that I feel like I can look forward and look back across my life with some amount of clarity that wasn’t afforded me at my last birthday.
I can see how my history has shaped me and how my family has molded me. I can see glimpses of light through holes that appear in my possible futures. I can see a bigger picture than I could a year ago; the edges of the canvas have stretched outward, in some sort of reverse-photoshop-anti-crop motion, and there’s less of the photo greyed out than before.
Of course in all of my blinding clarity, I wonder if it is perhaps a disservice to myself to be so damn aware. Perhaps I should allow myself the rash insecurity and passion of my youth while I’m here, and while it’s still acceptable. Perhaps I shouldn’t try to be an older twenty-five, but a younger one.
And maybe — just maybe — I should think just a little bit less. Relax more. Let the hamster off his wheel. Take a friggin nap. Play more Nintendo.
Perhaps this doesn’t make any sense to you. But I’ve always been a work in progress, and perhaps I’m just now realizing it.
But who knows.
Happy Birthday. Here’s to many more happy posts.