On Turning 25.
A warm band of sunlight against my back, along with the smell of freshly cut grass and the distant, husky guffaw of the source of its truncation worked together to inveigle me to consciousness on the morning of my 25th birthday. I rolled over, initiating the ritual of stretching and flexing from top to toe while gliding my hands along my naked skin to assess whether or not I’d injured myself the night before, satisfied that the only damage seemed to be tenderness in the meaty part of my right palm and a sudden awareness that the inside of my mouth tasted like a campfire. I had chain-smoked cloves bummed from a guy in a Dick Tracy t-shirt while romping around the packed patio of the Ottawa Tavern, clad in acid yellow Ray Ban Wayfarers at 1 o’ clock in the morning, where I am sure I did not exude the apathetic sex appeal of a louche trustafarian in a Brett Easton Ellis novel, and I am also sure that I’m now too old to get away with trying.
I slid out of bed, pulling on underwear and American Apparel lounge shorts that are not much more substantial than underwear, smiling to myself because I know they make my housemate uncomfortable (“They should call them boner shorts.”) as I made a pre-destined Donnie Darko path to my fancy American refrigerator that dispenses ice and water at the touch of a button. As I did this, I did not think about how fortunate I was to not be a part of the Haitian diaspora, or how I could help make refreshing filtered beverages as easy for them to come by; nor did I think about the hundreds of thousands of gallons of oil currently spewing into the Gulf of Mexico and the widespread irreparable damage it’s caused to several ecosystems. Mostly, I just thought about how I didn’t want to get wrinkles, or get fat, if I absolutely had to continue the sad imitation of life that is my life.
I thought about last night’s conversation with Jemma, the obligatory “get your shit together because I’m a go-getter who has successfully gone and gotten and I know what you should be doing right now and THIS IS NOT IT” and I try to think about what it must feel like to be successful, but I have no barometer with which to gauge it, because I’ve never attempted to do anything. I suppose that walking around with a sense of accomplishment is a grand feeling. When I am in the presence of creative people with cool jobs who cluster together, cocktails in hand, and talk shop, the jealousy hangs - and it weighs - and it dissolves any sense of self-worth that comes from possessing all of the qualities that could elevate me to the status of these people, but none of the resources and none of the ambition.
I often try to convince myself that I’m merely attracted to the spoils of success, the ability to buy things when you want them and to travel when you want to, and that - barring the absence of those things - I’m actually very happy with my life and who I am… but that isn’t exactly true, especially not the “happy” part, and the jury is still deliberating on the “who I am” part. At this point, I wouldn’t be satisfied with a middle ground so much as an alternate universe: A place where I did not have to have a job, and there was a person or handheld device who’s job it was to plan out and shepherd me through my daily life of working out and doing yoga for four or five hours, lounging around reading, and eating imaginative, nutritious meals.
As I typed that sentence, I realized that this alternative universe is called rehab. Or if you downgrade the quality of the food, prison.
