24

24, so far, does not seem to agree with me. And I'm not even there yet.

I keep crying when I think about it. I don't know why. To be honest, I was looking forward to this birthday. For some reason, 24 seemed to me like an unofficial gateway into adulthood. 23 still felt young, carefree, unencumbered. I felt comfortable being irresponsible and making conscious bad decisions at 23. But 24 is buckle-down time. Start a career time, have serious relationships time, make myself a real life time. And I've felt, for a while now, ready and even eager to make that transition. So I don't understand why I feel so….

(I can't even think of a word for it. Ambivalent isn't negative enough. But terrified is too negative, and wouldn't say I'm exactly afraid. Apprehensive? Dreadful? Overwhelmed? All of those things in some proportion, I suppose. Yuck.)

Not to mention the fact that 23 was by and large the worst year of my life. I ought to be relieved it's over.

On the other hand, 23 was also the year I learned the most about myself. So it wasn't all bad.

It strikes me as sort of odd now that I've been placing so much value on a date, or on an age. Age, past a certain point, is mostly illusory. It isn't quantitative, or qualitative. My body is going to be 24 years old tomorrow. And what does that even really mean? A year is a measurement of the amount of time it takes for the earth to complete a full orbit around the sun. What does that have to do with me as human being? What can I possibly have in common with a chunk of rock in outer space? Will I be somehow more mature tomorrow than I was today because the earth will have returned to the same spot in the galaxy as it was in at the time of my birth? Of course not. If we lived on Jupiter, I'd have recently turned 2. On Venus, I'd be almost 39. Time doesn't necessarily have any bearing on my life experience or my emotional intelligence or any of the things that play into what I would categorize as aspects of maturity. So it's sort of ridiculous that I've been buying into this whole notion myself and looking at 24 like some sort of finish line when in reality all it is is a number. Abstract. Mostly meaningless.

I can only imagine how hard this would be hitting me if I hadn't gotten a promotion last week. At least the fact that I feel like I have a career for the first time as opposed to merely a job is some consolation.

I think the fact that so many people I know are getting married in the next few months is feeding into it in a very big way. Apparently while I've spent the past 8 years running around with inappropriate men, other people have been forging meaningful relationships. Which makes me feel not exactly like a failure, but certainly not proud of myself either. I've sabotaged a lot of relationships with men who would have been good for me, and I've wasted a lot of time chasing after others who I knew full well were bad. It makes me feel simultaneously very young and very old, and very much like I have nothing to show for any of it.

But then everything happens for a reason. Right?

So: happy birthday to me. I for one will be glad when it is over and I don't have to worry about bursting into tears every time someone wishes me well.