"You're being overdramatic."
- direct quote from my mom. (On maybe a weekly basis.)
Yup. It's been known to happen.
Which is why when my 22nd birthday sucked, I did the logical thing and assumed it was ME, letting my personal sense of melodrama get in the way of reality.
Canadian roommate (photographically referenced as Good Looking Roommate #1) celebrated her 22nd b-day yesterday. HER demeanor, especially in comparison to mine, can only be described as buoyant. But as we ended what was otherwise a typical Tuesday at school with some brownies iced with red and white maple leaves, she described the weird, lonely feeling that had been nagging at her most of the day.
I could relate.
I walked around on my 22nd birthday feeling old. The phrase "Eight years 'til I'm thirty" kept flashing through my head. I almost expected some peppy young freshmen running around campus to come offer me an arm while I crossed the street.
22 is a weird age. You've just come off pretty much the biggest birthday of your life the year before, and that celebration is still fresh, (or maybe mostly fuzzy) in your head. You experience 22 and realize you've done it. You've hit all the ages you couldn't WAIT to hit. What comes next? 55 to start receiving AARP benefits?? 25 to legally drive a rental car off the lot?? (Not even applicable in all 50 states...)
It felt like the beginning....of the end......OF MY YOUTH.
Maybe coming up next is all the stuff that gets sandwiched between 22 and 55. The responsibility, house, kids, job kind of stuff. But there's no definite birthday for that.
That's why I've decided that 23 is the next kick-ass birthday. Me and EVERYONE I can rally with me is gonna grab that number by its sweet curves and angles and party...not like rough, green, inexperienced 21 year olds, but like the seasoned, tasteful veterans that we are.
Don't let 22 get you down. Just do whatever you have to do to make it through the miserable year.
RECLAIM 23. Embrace it. TELL YOUR FRIENDS.
wahhhhh- have anything cool for when you turn 24!? im almost at my quarter life crisis!!!
ReplyDeleteI feel exactly the same way. 22 sucks. 23, here we come.
ReplyDeleteI know!!! 23 can only be a turn upward, right?!?
ReplyDeleteKells- don't you worry...YOU only get better with age.
hahaha- loveee youuuuuuuu
ReplyDeleteI'm like a fine wine- aged to perfection
What is this quarter-life-crisis thing? I am so pumped to turn 25! When you are 25 you can rent a car, the last thing denied to you by our ageist society. (Ok, besides being President. I think you have to be 38 or something) I always like odd number birthdays better anyway.
ReplyDeleteI'm pretty sure I hit my quarter life crisis at 20, sooooo I'm good. Overachiever as usual.
ReplyDelete