I spent my weekend visiting my good friend Aaron in New York City. As is custom when hanging out with Aaron, besides name-calling and ranting, we spent Saturday night in the Village at a karaoke bar. Still high on the big success of Over Socialized's stellar performance last week, I was ready to rock out. (Thank you to all who said that my performance 'didn't suck as much as they thought it would’). Since we are nothing but creatures of habit, my friend John sang Blink 182's timeless anthem, 'What's My Age Again?'. The premise of the song is the idea of immaturity, specifically when one is 23 years old. The chorus wails 'Nobody likes you when you're 23'. For the first time, the song finally means something. I'm going to be 23 on Wednesday. Tomorrow. With only that forced realism that three bottles of Stella Artois brings, I thought I was faced with the prospect of being unliked. A headache and bout of light sensitivity the next day, though, cured that negative thought.
I don't believe in prophecies, especially those in Emo songs. Just like I don't believe in rapture or germs, I fully expect to be not just liked, but loved, by all my friends and family come June 15. Take that Machiavelli. While my confidence is unwavering, the rest of me is unsure. I'm confronted with the idea of what it means to act my age. I was recently assaulted by an abysmal blog by another such birthday girl. While her post was a rambling of personal ups and downs, a checklist of success and failures and even worse grammar than some Asian take-out menus, I don't intend to commit so much prattling. I've strived to make this blog more than just about me, but it's difficult when you're the one writing it. Yet, when I look back, I've realized that I seemingly made my year of 22 entirely about me.
I'm not arguing this is wholly a bad thing. After all, it’s taken me a while to realize this, but if you don't do something yourself, it won't get done. I admire ambitious individuals and go-getters like Ryan Seacrest, despite the fact everyone makes fun of me for my love of him. I still can't stomach American Idol but I love AT40. In the final day of 22, I can't get over the fact of how much I've seemingly accomplished this year. A job. A nice place to live. A notary certification. A gig in a band. Dangerously close to 100 new beers. But in the course of a lifetime, what do my accomplishments matter? I know now they aren’t mine alone. I’ve piggybacked all of these things based on what I see my older friends do because it impresses me. Imitation is the highest form of flattery, after all.
Older isn’t pejorative (one of my favorite words) but I deem it something admirable. My first friends in college were all a year older than me. It is rare for me to find a friend actually the same age and in the same place in life as me. Even now, I purposefully live with wonderful roommates who are older than me. I never thought to consider what it was that drew me to people older than me until now—I liked to believe you old folks have your shit together.
Truthfully, it makes sense. I view you as trailblazers. You have a handful of years of career experience on under your belt. Your parents don’t have you on your health insurance plan anymore. You drive cars you bought and don’t get carded at bars anymore. You know how to file your own taxes and find things inside supermarkets without looking up at the aisle markers. You live in a foreign country. You have boyfriends and girlfriends, husbands and wives, some of you children. You’ve lost loved ones. You are preparing to go to war. You’re in debt. You’re unemployed. You’re all of these and none of these, simultaneously. But what I respect most about you all is that you get out of bed and still just do it. Everyday. Your persistence is contagious, especially to someone just yearning to catch a hint of your colds and flus of life.
So, as I reach 23, I see that Blink 182 was wrong. People still like you when you’re 23 but life doesn’t always like you. Langston Hughes wrote that life ain’t no crystal stair. There are boards torn up, carpet ripped and parts of it are bare. Sorry for the horrible paraphrasing. As shitty as Hughes makes it sound, he leaves the reader with the message to keep climbing that proverbial stair of life.
Before, I had that glamorized impression that people older than me were infallible with their sagacity. At this moment, I know you don’t all have your shit together. Nobody does. But you’ve made it work, at least most of the time. My immaturity sees that it’s better that way. And even though none of you are Ryan Seacrest, I actually love you all more for screwing up and still dreaming big. So to everyone in my life who drink until they vomit, got married this year, graduated, had to find a job, got a puppy, fell in love, moved away from or back home, and drank new beers with me, thanks. You carry my ass up those stairs every day. I owe you.
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