My Birthday

         Today...is my thirty-second birthday. Well, technically, it begins at 3:15 p.m. shortly after my mother's water broke while she was folding intricate corners in the sheets of her bed that morning, over three decades ago. I was two weeks early. Even in the womb I was ready to get started with my life. Although, this morning, I spent the last fifteen minutes lying in bed with my eyes closed trying to force myself back to sleep after I was awakened by a ping sounding from my cell phone. Now it was vengefully screaming to get plugged in before its battery died. Taking a glance at the screen I noticed that I had at least twenty different Facebook messages from friends wishing me a happy birthday. I smiled and sighed at the same time. Those are going to take me forever the respond to. Think anyone would mind if I sent a mass message? No, I hate getting those. They're so impersonal. I'll get to them when I'm bored out of my mind at work tonight. Yes, I'm working on my birthday. I usually do. After my eighteenth birthday, I gave up on celebrations and wanted nothing more to do with parties in my honor. They just seem to end up in one disaster or another and I never really liked the attention, just the gifts...of course. Though, through the years I've amassed more things than I care to own. It all just seems like clutter these days, but I feel bad throwing them away because of the sentimental value attached to them. I really should just toss most of it out. The thirty or so souvenir snow globes I've collected from various destinations I've traveled to in the last decade, the large collection of Disney stuffed animals overtaking my couch, the Star Wars figurines and talking Yodas that stand guard over the reams of books that threaten to avalanche on me whenever I peruse my overstuffed bookshelf. It's a new year, maybe the final year. If I'm going to clean house, it may as well be sooner than later. Less work for everyone else if things go as I believe they might.

            After the sinking reminder that today was my birthday, my ears instantly tuned to the sound of rain starting to pelt against the fire escape outside my bedroom window. Ah, there you are. Good morning birthday rain. I've been expecting you. Rain on my birthday has been a running joke in my family for as long as I can remember. Every year on my birthday, it rains wherever I am in the world without fail. When I was younger it was a nuisance because I always looked forward to celebrating the day with friends and family with a BBQ or something involving the outdoors. Later, it became a comforting sound, like a warm blanket on a cold evening and a fortuitous tradition, like a first snow on Christmas day.

         When I finally decided to lift my head from the pillow, Gizmo, my fluffy, obese cat, started whining for her food. Consumed by fear of possibly never having another meal in the last of her nine lives when she saw my head hit the pillow again, she jumped onto the bed and began to swat at my head. Okay, I'm coming. Sheesh.

            Dragging myself to the kitchen I fed Gizmo before she mocked a faint, then sat down at the kitchen table and stared at my laptop. After watching the screensaver swim across the screen for ten minutes, I decided to begin my story. Besides writing in a diary, or for course work at school this was my first attempt at writing for the general public. Hold the applause, please. I would first like ask you to forgive me if I bore you or ramble on about nothing. Feel free to move on and never glance at another word if this has been the case thus far. Although, the reason I am writing this story is because I think I might have a few final things to say if this is to be the last year of my life.

            What? You may be asking–is this crazy bitch talking about? Yes, you read that correctly. As far as I know, or rather, feel, I believe this statement to be true. It was on my tenth birthday that I had a sort of epiphany, or prophecy if you wish. This feeling came to me after receiving a diary from my grandmother as a gift. It was my very first diary. The little book was small with a puffy white cover, much like those Lisa Frank stickers that used to adorn the covers of our notebooks and Trapper Keepers in elementary school back in the 80's. The front cover of the diary had a clown on it and a little pink lock. It looked a little adolescent, even for a ten-year-old, but I loved it. For the first time, the flame of desire to write consumed me and all I wanted to do was run to my room and write. However, with this desire also came the melancholy realization that this small diary represented the beginning of the end of my life. I know, very morbid and prophetic for a ten-year-old to be thinking on her birthday. Flashing before my eyes was not a full life where I saw myself as an old woman surrounded by friends and family on the final days of her life in the distant future, what I saw instead was my thirty-two-year-old self, all alone, and on her last leg. Life was leaving me, and the world, as I knew it, was slipping away. Then I saw nothing more. Putting into words the sensations that overtook me is difficult to describe. But as I remember it, I was desperate to hold on to the life I was leaving behind and afraid of what I wasn't sure was coming. Thirty-two was a number that seemed to hover in the backdrop of my consciousness. The number came to me like a problem I had been calculating in my head for some time and the answer just came floating up to the surface like a mist, while the image of my thirty-two-year-old-self faded away.

            That night I wrote in my little diary, nothing of any real depth, just what I had done that day. It went something like...."Today is my birthday. I woke up, ate breakfast, brushed my teeth and watched TV. Mom and Dad bought me dinner at D'Angelo's (the neighborhood sandwich shop) and Mom made me a birthday cake. Vavó (Grandmother) gave me this diary as a birthday gift, which I'm writing in. Paul (my oldest brother) gave me a punch in the head...again..." Very plain and simple, void of any emotion, hope or desire. It was just a run through of events like a shopping list. I was still learning to hone my prosaic skills. In fact, I'm still learning.

            This morning, just before Gizmo decided to attack my face, I felt that burning desire to write again. I suppose it's to bookend my life. An homage I would like to give to my younger self, to finish the story I had started so many years ago. For the past twenty-two years I've been consumed by fear and living with constant anxiety to do everything I've ever wanted to do, see all that I could, and experience everything possible before my time was up. I've walked the Great Wall of China, visited Disney World and Disney Land, got a tattoo, graduated from college (the first in my family line. Thank you), traveled to Mexico, Canada, Aruba, Bermuda, three islands of the Azores, lived in LA for a time, New York City for several years, went skydiving, got married...and divorced, had my heart broken and broke a few myself. But, all of this barely grazes the surface of what the world has to offer and I still want to do.  If this is going to be it and I have so much more to do and see, then there is no time to waste. I will throw caution to the wind and celebrate my life the way it was meant to be for me because I can, and I deserve it. We all do. I believe that it was never meant to be lived sitting on the couch watching two seasons of How I Met Your Mother for three days straight. Through this blog, I will be held accountable to write the story I plan to live. If something is to happen to me, I'll at least have something worth reading to leave behind. And so to that, I say, bring it 2012-2013! I'm ready.