Twenty 1

I recently turned twenty-one, which is a birthday that I guess everybody values because you get to drink a lot of alcohol in public and not feel guilty about it anymore. And on your birthday, people buy you alcohol. So if you have a lot of friends, you won't even be able to remember their generosity the next day. Luckily, I'm not as popular as most (my friends are great, but few-- something I like most about them), and so I could fully remember who gave me what drink and why, with only a slight head ache the following morning.

As most people say, you don't feel different on your birthday. I guess that's true for me. I think for every birthday I've had since I can remember, I felt the same. Maybe that's because I'm the same person and don't know how to change. Or maybe I do, but I change when I'm not looking, when I'm trying to change the things around me and forget about myself.

Maybe that's how anybody grows at all-- they stop worrying about themselves, the things they wish weren't true about their insides, and begin working on the world around them. Maybe through that, the world changes you as you change the world. And that might be a good thing, or a very bad thing.

That's another thing about growing up. It's the feeling-- the sensation that the world is getting older with you. You find out new things about it, dirty secrets, muddy corners, darker shades in the world that you had never thought existed, that you probably should never have known when you were young. Like that glare of judgment you get from a family getting into their car that's parked right by your's, and you accidentally kind of sort of almost hit them... almost. Just because you didn't see them (No, I was not drunk driving, Mom...). It was a sober mistake. But the look in their eyes was a sort of knowing hatred-- like they knew every part of me and hated it in one big swiping assumption. The feeling of being hated by someone who does not know you-- I guess that's a part of getting older, even though this example might be a bit weak. I have more.

I've only gone a week into being twenty-one, and I haven't done a very good job at being twenty-one. I'm not talking about being responsible with consumption and all that. I'm talking more about me being who I thought I would be if I were to ever turn twenty-one.

Let's say you had a button. And if you pushed this button, it would send you back  five years ago to the cramped halls of my Christian high school in Mexico. You push that button, then you find my five-years-younger self and you ask him this question: Where do you think you'll be in five years?

I think the image that I had for my future self was a lot cleaner than how I turned out to be. I probably had better posture in that image in my head. I probably had a lot of room in my conscience filled with idealism and faith, rather than the cynicism and doubts that I hold onto now. I probably saw myself having read a lot more books, and I probably would have prayed a lot more to some God or other. And I probably would have payed a lot more attention to intricacies. I probably would have cared a lot more in my pursuits to define beauty, to understand what longing means, and to even try to wrestle with the concepts of love.

Instead, I am me. I am dirty (though I try to take a shower at least once a day) and my back is a little bent, both from my own carelessness and also from the weight of growing up. And gravity. I am naturally cynical, and I have the bad habit of giving my doubts more attention than my hopes. I've read my share of books, but still have yet to finish Crime and Punishment. And the intricacies of life have flown past me like the robins and sparrows I saw flying above me, as the first signs of spring.

As for love, I have tinkered, and it is a monster that I do not understand, and my cynicism and doubts make me believe that it is a far-off ideal that perhaps I will never fully experience. But here's to hope, and here's to growing up.