137.

my birthday happened, as it always does, the second day of the new year. there are many beginnings that these times are supposed to mark; especially when the day that marks the beginning of your life and your subsequent survival, is clinging to the coattails of the new year. I acknowledge that I should remake, reconsider, reconstruct all the things that need tinkering, but, well, that’s not really how I feel these days. hell, in my existential-crisis laden processes of thought, most days are for all of that stuff. instead, my birthday happened and usher in an overwhelming sense of gratitude for you people.

on my birthday I thought about my mom a lot and wondered how scared she might have been growing me into a human twenty-nine years ago. I appreciated it and her more now that I’ve had a nephew and a best friend niece and understand (as best I can as only a witness) what a crazy, crazy miracle the making of human beings is. In a world that hasn’t taught me that sticking around is required, I thought about her doing just that, putting up with my nonsense, and still trying to love me as I resisted everything in my adolescent angst (let’s be honest, I’m still kind of angsty). I wondered how many nights I must’ve replaced her dreams with dreadful worry and I hoped that I offered some joy in there too…to temper the all the trouble that she put into making sure I became an alright girl. 

I thought about my friends and how many nights I’ve asked each of them to sit up with me on a southern porch, a city fire escape, or in a loud barroom and listen to my ramblings, to my tangential tales I get sidetracked by, to joy-filled to tales of adventure, to despair, to the thousands of questions I have about living this life and what it means to be a good woman. so many unanswerable questions have they graciously navigated with me. each time, no doubt they illuminated some new path, turned me in a different direction, or stopped me in my tracks when that was necessary. what I remembered most is that they sat with me because I needed them.

those people text me jokes but also excerpts from the book they are reading. they send me songs recordings, pictures of their paintings, illustrated letters, care packages with old socks, new books, and artifacts that represent their vastness, their creativity, and their  love.

they inspire me to understand kindness and love better so I can practice being a better human. just by living the way they do and wildly chasing after their many passions as they manifest in their lives, they inspire me to create, to consider, and to keep. fucking. going. after all the things.

there is such a bounty of love in my life. on my birthday i considered how each time we reach out to someone we are asking them to love us, to hold us up in this world, to foster a feeling of home, or just to remind us that it, and we, are worth the trouble. this year on my birthday I am so incredibly grateful for having another year of life and am humbled by the recognition that I owe so much to the people I love and have loved through these years of living.

hot damn, I’m a lucky thing.

thank y’all. for everything.