On July 17th I will turn 32 and I am feeling a bit sentimental, maybe even melancholic, about my birthday. No need to worry about me, this happens every year. I am a Cancer Sun and Pisces Moon, to be sentimental and — at times — melancholic is in my nature and my birthday always stirs up a range of emotions. Something about the passage of time just has a way of knocking the wind right out of me.
Ahead of birthdays past, I would often find myself in a state of panic. The idea of turning a year older still so unsure of who I was or what I wanted out of life would send me into a tailspin.
‘I’m almost 25,’ I would think to myself as I lied awake in bed at 3:00 A.M. ‘How the fuck do I still not know what I want to do with my life?’
Not to mention how disappointed I would feel when a birthday was on the horizon and I had failed to reach a milestone I had expected to meet by then.
‘I’m turning 28 in a week, how the fuck is it possible I haven’t been promoted to *insert title I was chasing here*?’
But these aren’t the things I am ruminating over this year and that is partially due to the fact that for the first time in my entire life, I do know who I am and what I want for my future. I feel comfortable in my skin and settled in my life in a way that I never have before.
I haven’t hit all the milestones I thought I would by 32 — still missing a couple kids, a mortgage, and a book deal — but I’m okay with not having hit those milestones because for the first time I truly believe I will hit those milestones. The timeline might be different from the one in my head, but I’m pretty confident that I will achieve all that and more in due time.
You’re probably thinking, ‘If this bitch is so content, why is she feeling so emotional about her birthday?’
That is a great question. One I couldn’t answer myself until the other day.
I am emotional because I am mourning all the paths I chose not to take and all the lives I will not live.
Don’t get me wrong. I am actually quite happy with my life and the direction it is headed. After spending the better part of my first three decades feeling adrift, treading water, and desperately searching for shore, feeling content and confident is a gift I don’t take for granted.
But I also recognize that in building my current life, there are hundreds of other lives I chose not to build. Lives I said no to. Lives I will never know.
Some of those lives I know I would not have been happy living, but there are others I wonder about. Others I mourn. Not because I am unhappy in my current life, but because I think I could have been equally happy in those other lives. The lives I did not choose.
I like to believe that parallel universes exist. That there are endless versions of us running around somewhere in the ether.
Taking the risks we chose not to take. Loving the people we chose not to love. Living the lives we chose not to live.
I hope that I am happy in all of my lives across all of the universes. But if at any point some version of me is not — including this version in this universe — I hope I remember that it is never too late to make a different choice. To change my mind. To change the outlook of my future.
And I hope the same for you in this life and all the others.
XOXO,
Maddie
Happy early Birthday! As someone who’s also nearing 32, this speaks to me. I think about the various parallel universes often.
Happy birthday from the cancer rising, Pisces sun, Libra moon who shares the melancholy of all the lives we can mourn. I appreciate seeing my own feelings reflected here.