An Accolade, A Year Older

I turned 32 last Monday. Spent a quiet day with my partner - he was working and so, I took the time to do nothing. 

In my mind, there's a constant wrestle against the celebratory aspects of what a birthday normally be.

Age 5, you found yourself slicing through a buttercream spongecake sprinkled with chocolate rice, you smile for the photos, you have no recollection of who instructed you to look happy for the camera. Age 12, the confusing puberty of not here, nor there, you struggled in school, you don't understand the whole high achievers rank and your parents' fallibility. Age 18, you deliberately chose to stay away from your parents, there was so much fights, it broke your soul. You took flights, you learned the meaning of airport waits, check ins, punctuality. Age 20, you questioned everything, you read stuffs you're incapable of its totality. Your dad made you sat and explained yourself. You were told the consequences of denouncing. Age 23, you started teaching, working, being laughed at, laughing with the young kids who are now young adults. Age 25, you went to London, it was a year long silence, the self is restructured to a discordance. You enjoyed cherries, brioche, the taste of cold shivering bones, long walks, bus rides, and Marks and Spencer's juices. Age 28, you mutually decided to be married to the partner. Age 32, you're still in school, probing things you don't quite understand the torture it brings. You have no kids yet.

Is there even time to question yourself over the things that have been done?

Responsibilities come, and they go away, as you wish, as you may not have wished.

Between the stacks of books you collected over the years; in between promises broken to not have more. Furniture and carpets curated to your tasteful judgment against the dominant, cats sent from above and taken to inflict melodrama, plants tendered to dying roots, meals you learn to appreciate and hate, the songs that have stayed etched in your brain, you wallowed in them - you exist in categories. You can't be the other.

Sometimes you read horoscopes on Instagram to feel better, you thought about lost, unreconstructed friendships, you expressed gratitude for not pursuing former individuals romantically. To all the things that doesn't happen yet in your one way road.

Happy birthday, dear self.