Birthdays

loving myself through it all

On August 18th, I turned 43.

How strange, to be 43 years-old.

Me on my birthday, unfiltered and unwashed.

I am now nine years away from the age my mother was when she ended her life.

I am older than I ever thought I’d be.

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I am now over 20 years away from the person I was when I was a heroin addict. 25 years away from the person I was when I was a homeless teenager. 31 years away from 12 year-old me, who ran away from home for the first time. 41 years away from the Sea Org compound in Southern California. 13 years away from my mother’s suicide, and the last summer I worked as a wildland firefighter.

I mean, if I choose to look at it that way.

Which I don’t.

For me, it’s unmooring to frame time in economical, linear way. I am not separated from any previous version of myself; time doesn’t separate me from myself.

Wikipedia says “Time is the continued sequence of existence and events that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future.”

That’s the only definition I’ll give you, but it’s not the only definition.

When I think of time, and my body, and the way my body has changed throughout time, I imagine a time lapse of a seed germinating, growing into a flower, blooming, shining, and then slowly wilting, decaying, dying. Except it doesn’t die. It once again becomes a flower, but not the same flower. It is recycled.

I did nothing special on my birthday. Actually, my past few birthdays have been relatively depressing. The last really good birthday I had was when I was living in Syracuse, NY, where I had friends and a community.

I did nothing special, but I was present. My present to myself was presence. I unpacked boxes, excited to finally be settling into a space where I will likely live until the end of my PhD. I took a short nap. I went to Xfinity and hooked up my internet. I went to Nothing but Bundt cakes and got a free small bundt cake. I brought it home and lit a candle and made a real, actual wish. I put my hands on my heart and felt what I was feeling: a mixture of gratitude, sadness, anxiety, excitement. All at the same time. The cake was delicious.

Over the past couple weeks I’ve been doing a lot of IFS (internal family systems) work. I am in conversation with my child selves. There are many child versions of me. I said to my therapist: “It feels like I had to reject a new part of myself every single day when I was a child.” I imagine those parts of myself sliced away each day, relegated to the dark caves of my psyche and heart.

Gratitude. Sadness. Anxiety. Excitement.

Two months ago, in a reiki session, which my therapist conducts for me over the phone, I gathered many of my selves around me and took them for a walk in my favorite park here in Tallahassee.

“There a little one, she’s very joyful,” my therapist said, and I knew who she was talking about. I’ve seen that child in pictures, curly hair wild, smile wide. That child transformed, each year, into someone who didn’t smile. By the time I was eleven I was practicing my scowl in the mirror in order to repel any peer who dared think I was friend material. Thirteen moves in ten years will do that, I guess.

“I’m afraid of humans,” I said to my therapist, several sessions ago.

Really, I was afraid of myself. Of what I perceived as unknowable. I was afraid of showing myself to other humans, lest I face rejection, which has historically, for me, felt like death.

In New Orleans I went out one evening for barbecue, and I felt a social anxiety so intense I could barely stand waiting ten minutes for my food. I didn’t eat there; I took it home. There’s something about being looked at.

There’s something about being seen that has historically, for me, felt like death.

Really being seen.

My gift has always been in seeing others.

Or has it?

Can I really see others for who they are if I am hiding myself?

my sweet and tiny little bedroom in the jungle cottage.

I’ve been 43 for six days. I never thought I’d be this old.

But what is old?

I say to someone, I’m old! and shrug, like I can’t help it if I know cultural references from the eighties and think touching grass is a natural way of being rather than something we should do only when we feel on the edge of insanity.

For my birthday, I am giving my self permission to stop measuring time incrementally. I am tearing down the fences of old and young. My age as a number or a category is irrelevant, and it always has been irrelevant. Generational divides are irrelevant. Inside of the number 43 lives every other year, every other age I’ve been, all accumulated and present as they ever were. I change, but I remain the same. I will die someday, but I will never die.

If I sit quietly and meditate on time, I imagine myself, my body, as it is now but containing everything I have been and everything I will be. Time moves towards me, away from me. Time expands and everything is present within that expansion. There is no escaping who I have been, what has happened to me.

And why would I need to escape? I am here now. I rent a small cottage, my own dwelling. I have thousands of dollars in credit card debt. I am planning my garden for the winter. I am behind on all of my assignments before the school year has begun. I am fucking up every day. Every day, I remind myself that to be human is to fuck up. Or I ask myself: who defines the parameters of fucking up? Whose made-up world am I living in? Whose definitions am I unconsciously abiding by?

I am living my life. And it is mine. And no one can ever take that from me, except myself. So, I’m here for it all.

On my birthday I didn’t set any goals for myself.

I put my hand on my heart and said, I am here.

I am giving myself permission to show up authentically. Not authentically as defined by capitalist marketing or pseudo-spiritualism, but authentically as in honestly, in integrity with what I want to express from the inside.

I am giving myself permission to show myself, despite being afraid of rejection in every form.

Isn’t rejection a gift, in a way?

So much of my anxiety stems from an internal struggle about how I want to express myself and how I think others want me to express myself.

But I’ve known for a long time that living for others is not really living, but surviving; clinging to each person like a raft that will keep me afloat. Looking to others for self-definition and approval.

I’ve been practicing authenticity for a long time, and I keep getting better at it. The better I am at fully expressing myself in each moment, the more often I find myself in deep, authentic relationships with myself, others, and the world around me.

The more I am myself, my full self, the more the world springs forth, inviting me to relax, to notice. Beyond survival.

Happy birthday to me.

A note:

I will be sending out a newsletter every morning for the next few weeks. This is an extension of my own personal morning pages, which I do each morning on paper. These morning newsletters may be short or long. It’s a daily practice for me— to write letters to you about how I am showing up in my life. I (very very much) encourage you to respond, comment, engage with what I am writing/thinking about.

Tell me: what is up for you right now? What are you working on creatively or personally? What’s pissing you off? What’s scaring you? Where are you finding joy or rest or kindness? What’s inspiring you. Leave a comment below.