What's a birthday without denial?
Posted by Christina | | Posted On Friday, February 12, 2010 at 10:51 AM
Today I am 26. I am not happy about this.
I loved being 25. Old enough to have a decent job, disposable income, and an upgrade from that crappy apartment we all had in our early 20s. Not quite old enough to take things like life, love, and the future too seriously. Granted, I’ve always taken things pretty seriously, so you free spirited folks should take this with a grain of salt. But something clicked with this whole 26 business. Quite frankly, I don’t want to grow up. At least not beyond what it means to be 25.
Perhaps it is what is coming in my 26th year that makes me take stock of what has led me to where I’m at today, and how the heck I got here. And as I examine that path, I see where I veered off of what my 20-year-old self thought I’d be doing when I turned 26. Sometimes those detours were good, and they make me smile. Other times they were bad, and they make me disappointed. And sometimes it was just a matter of choosing a path, and it is those that kill me. It is the ‘what if?’ of getting older that makes it so tough. What if I had moved to that city? What if I hadn’t gotten married? What if I had taken that job? For every year that passes, we get further down the path of becoming who we’re going to be and, simultaneously, further away from the alternative iterations of who we could have been.
For the past several years I’ve managed to walk the line between the “is” and the “could have been”, zig zagging my way back and forth as I caught a whim or an opportunity, but still trying to stay grounded in the more finite parts of my life. But at some point we have to grow up, choose a path and walk down it, trusting that it will all turn out in the end. That’s the adult thing to do. And it is at that point that I now find myself. Aching from the growing pains, wishing I did not have to grow up, but thankful all the same for another year, another path, and another adventure.
I loved being 25. Old enough to have a decent job, disposable income, and an upgrade from that crappy apartment we all had in our early 20s. Not quite old enough to take things like life, love, and the future too seriously. Granted, I’ve always taken things pretty seriously, so you free spirited folks should take this with a grain of salt. But something clicked with this whole 26 business. Quite frankly, I don’t want to grow up. At least not beyond what it means to be 25.
Perhaps it is what is coming in my 26th year that makes me take stock of what has led me to where I’m at today, and how the heck I got here. And as I examine that path, I see where I veered off of what my 20-year-old self thought I’d be doing when I turned 26. Sometimes those detours were good, and they make me smile. Other times they were bad, and they make me disappointed. And sometimes it was just a matter of choosing a path, and it is those that kill me. It is the ‘what if?’ of getting older that makes it so tough. What if I had moved to that city? What if I hadn’t gotten married? What if I had taken that job? For every year that passes, we get further down the path of becoming who we’re going to be and, simultaneously, further away from the alternative iterations of who we could have been.
For the past several years I’ve managed to walk the line between the “is” and the “could have been”, zig zagging my way back and forth as I caught a whim or an opportunity, but still trying to stay grounded in the more finite parts of my life. But at some point we have to grow up, choose a path and walk down it, trusting that it will all turn out in the end. That’s the adult thing to do. And it is at that point that I now find myself. Aching from the growing pains, wishing I did not have to grow up, but thankful all the same for another year, another path, and another adventure.
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