older

I awoke to the realization that today was my nineteenth birthday

I laid there for a moment recalling how I felt when I awoke on my eighteenth birthday

Nothing felt out of place,

nothing in the air had been charged,

and nothing in the air begged me to inhale it more graciously, as if my ascent to real adulthood required more oxygen

As one does upon their birthday, I reflected upon the previous year

I ruminated on the places I'd seen-

lakes of the midwest, dark hallways with strangers I was supposed to know, funeral homes I wished didn't exist

The places I'd waited-

the concrete carpet with friends for our favorite band, the stoplight of a town 400 miles from home, and calmly on a bench to call off a relationship with a guy I had just met

The people with whom I'd shared my voice-

fellow feminists, 5 year olds with autism who just wanted a piggy back and a hand to steady them on the hiking path,

my dad, finally

The places I hid my voice-

my brother's fraternity, a breakup text dripping with humor

I dwelled for a brief second on the men and women I had exchanged my touch with,

and with whom I had woken up without

As I flipped on my stomach

I could feel my swollen brain, gorged with knowledge, begging me to do something with it

I looked at the polaroids I had hung above my bed

and comfortably remembered the unrequited love

I had come to halting terms with, but now rested with like cozy pillow under my stomach

I looked at the faces of friends whom I would now consider long distant friends. I wasn't sure if things would settle with them in the same way they had for 3 sensational months of summer

I shuddered at the toxins I had so willingly placed in my body,

pills, alcohol, drugs, unnecessary self-criticisms

I considered my weight-

a number that had risen and fallen due to over-eatting on the weekends and the daily under-eatting to compensate for the liquid sugar from the night before

I saw pictures of my hair, a foot longer than it is now and considered all I had put it through

I thought about my brothers

I wondered what they were thinking about when they woke up one year older

I do not feel older, I do not feel wiser.

I feel fine.

I am nineteen and I feel fine.

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