“Don’t be afraid to be weak”

Sometimes a memory can knock me down.

Enigma – “Return to Innocence”

I haven’t heard this song in years.

The moment it started playing on my Pandora, though, I slipped like Alice into a wormhole of memories. No longer was I sitting in my office, idly inputting invoices. I was sitting in the back of a red Expedition, headphones over my ears, my personal CD player clasped in my hand, staring at him. In that moment, we weren’t talking… at least not verbally. We were speaking with our eyes - an affection impossible to convey in words. Was it love? Who knows? We were young. We had our lives ahead of us... Except he didn’t really.

I keep his picture on my wall at work. Occasionally people ask me if he is my boyfriend. I glance up at it, those familiar blue eyes cloaked in grey-scale, that hand propping up his head, that thick shock of hair through which my fingers remember sliding. That smile, lips parted, perfect teeth. I remember the way he tasted. “No,” I reply. “That’s Kip.” As if that explains everything.

We met when I was fourteen.  By twenty, our paths in life had taken  us in different directions.

He had a buffalo on his license plate. I loved the way he said certain words. I see him in the faces of strangers. I catch memories of his scent in the air. I slept with his note in my pillowcase for years.

He didn’t live to thirty.

I often wonder: If I had told him how I felt about him instead of just assuming that he knew, would he have still pulled the trigger?

We bought the CD together at a tiny hole-in-the-wall music store in Colorado. It was jumbled in a bin with other used CDs. It was three dollars. The case had a crack in it. Enigma. He pulled it out, eyes wide, corners of his mouth climbing into his cheeks. “Hey, you gotta get this one! You’ll like this one!” So I bought it, along with Rancid, Goldfinger and a fifty cent copy of Zero Mostel’s Fiddler On The Roof. The cashier looked at me strangely, but he was too busy perusing the impulse buys to notice. I was too busy watching him to care. I listened to that damned CD over and over and over when he wasn’t around.
I hated Enigma.

I never told him that.

Kip, I’m sorry your world couldn’t make you happy… but I’m grateful that you were in mine.

Thirty

It is 11:44pm. I am sitting up in bed. In 16 minutes, I am going to be thirty.

Thirty.

The word itself intimidates me. Thirty.

As I’ve been lamenting about this upcoming birthday, I’ve noticed something. Certain birthdays seem to have more importance than others. At 16, a kid is considered responsible enough to drive a car. At 18, they’re way more mature, so we allow them to vote or marry or join the military. At 21, we thrust bottles of tequila into their oh-so-responsible hands and tell them to drink! I personally attached a lot of meaning to my 25^th birthday for reasons that will remain vague. But 30….

People who have already cruised past the 30^th year tend to look at me with the same calm patient expression I give my niece when she tells me of her adventures in high school. The look that says “You just don’t know how good you have it!” People who have already bounced on their thirtieth lillypad tell me that they just wish they were thirty again!

But those of us still in our twenties, even if only for 10 more minutes, see the thirties as this horribly daunting prospect… Thirty means adulthood. Thirty means responsibility. Thirty means that I should probably give up the stash of comic books I have hidden in my closet and start buying Newsweek or Time. Thirty means that my guilty pleasure of trashy romance novels should be replaced by Wall Street Journals. Thirty means that my Xbox should be packed up, my games sold. Thirty means that my dreams of ever making it big as a writer should be tucked away in a scrap book to be pulled out on special occasions so I could remember how cute I was for thinking I had a chance…

Yes… Thirty seems like the end of the freaking world.

Yes, I’m being melodramatic.

So, here I am… five minutes away from adulthood… And I’m willing the clock to stop. I have so much more I want to do before I grow up.

True, when I was 25, my five-year-plan involved marriage, children, a dog, a house, and a published novel. Well... I have a dog. One out of five ain't bad... right? Here I am… three minutes from thirty… and what do I have to show for it?

What do I have to show for it?

I have a better understanding of who I am. I have an eerie grasp on what makes other people tick. I figured out why I am the way I am and how to love myself despite all of my imperfections.

And I have a very healthy respect for people that refuse to lose their inner child when they hit thirty.

So, here it is. Midnight. Make a wish, blow out a candle.

Sing me a song.

I didn’t just turn thirty….

I just leveled up.


Here’s to a great year!