Another trip around the sun, another year older, and somehow, it still catches me off guard. Birthdays don’t make me sentimental anymore; they make me aware, of time, of motion, of all the ways I’ve changed and stayed the same. Forty-eight feels too young to feel this wise, too old to feel this curious. But here I am, somewhere in between, still learning what it means to live wide open.
Thank you to everyone who took the time yesterday to wish me a happy birthday.
Hard to believe I’m forty-eight… wait, forty-nine? No, forty-eight. I think. Anyway, it doesn’t matter.
Sometimes I panic when I think about things like, “In 2030, we’ll install new social studies standards.” Not because of the standards, but because of the 2030. I can still remember partying like it was 1999 when it actually was 1999.
I remember being ten, with parents who were forty, and thinking they were ancient. Now, with parents who are seventy-eight and seventy-nine (I’m forty-eight, nailed it; my mum is thirty years older than me), I think about how young they still are and how much time we still have left to travel and explore.
I no longer measure time in minutes and seconds. In frat parties or nightclubs or boys. I think in weeks, months, and years. About retirement plans and portfolios. Menopause and hip replacements. I curse at my phone, send words instead of memes, and laugh because, well, here I am, the person my parents warned me about. The person they swore I’d become.
I went from wild and carefree to achy and crotchety seemingly overnight.
I turn down the music when it’s raining too hard because I can’t see well when it’s too loud. I brace for the “oof” every morning when I crawl out of bed, my knees, hips, and back punishing me for the years I punished them in sports, and in stupid (but also fun) things like Spartan races.
I track BOGO sales at grocery stores and make meal plans instead of eating leftover pizza I found on my dorm room floor or tacos I found under my pillow.
I still love unsensible shoes, but I only wear them when it’s sensible.
I haven’t yet started calling the front desk when the room next door is too loud, but I might have knocked… politely… on the wall once or twice.
And I definitely don’t have TikTok.
Sometimes I stumble across old photos from college, me in my purple plastic skirt, that shiny green jacket (also plastic) I thought made me invincible, and I wish I could tell that girl how beautiful she was before the world convinced her she wasn’t. How thin she was. How unbreakable she’d turn out to be.
I wish I could tell her that strength doesn’t come from holding everything together; it comes from falling apart and finding a way back. That every wound, even the ones that felt fatal, would scab over and diminish in time. That the broken hearts and tear-soaked pillows, the stupid boys and stupid girls and cruel words, would one day shrink down into stories she’d tell with a laugh.
I wish I could tell her the world wasn’t ending every time someone ghosted her, or when she cried herself sick over someone who probably sells insurance in Ohio now and hasn’t explored the Rocky Mountains alone. That those sleepless nights were wasted on people who didn’t deserve to know her favorite songs. That those long nights waiting for the phone to ring were keeping her from hearing herself instead.
And that those wounds, now faint scars, would become the very fabric that built her. How every break had taught her to bend. Sturdy, imperfect, a little frayed in spots, but hers and hers alone. The kind of fabric that softens with time yet still holds up after every wash. The jeans you still wear from high school. The T-shirt that almost smells like him. The thread that runs through every version of herself, binding the girl she was to the woman she became.
If I could, I would pull that thread tight, trace it back to where it started, and I’d find her again, the girl who didn’t yet know what she was made of. I wish I could tell her that one day she’d grow up, be respected, earn a doctorate, and realize the people she once tried so hard to impress no longer even exist in her memory.
I’ve said before that while I have regrets, I don’t live with them, and that still holds true. They’re memories, not weights. Reminders, not anchors.
At forty-eight, I feel lucky to be where I am.
I have a handful of really good friends, the kind who’ve seen me at my worst and still answer the phone at two in the morning if I call in a panic… or a rage… or just because I’m bored. They send me pictures of otters, leave voice memos of themselves singing on my birthday, drop off authentic All Dressed chips on my doorstep, send random memes about leaves and how much the bitches love them, show up at my dissertation defense at eleven o’clock Netherlands time, still cut and style my hair, or jet off for a weekend in Vegas that we still don’t talk about. They visit me in Charlotte when they’re passing through, or maybe just to curl for the weekend, and leave little gifts on my desk because they thought of me and my ridiculous obsession with all things cats.
I have a best friend. The kind who calls when I’m too sad to talk, sits in silence while I cry, and only hangs up once she knows I’m in bed. The kind of friend who travels with me, who knows my darkest secrets, my worst impulses, my deepest fears, and still always shows up. She calls me on my shit but never judges me… at least not too harshly… and she always calls me back.
And I have a partner who celebrates me, ignores my tantrums, and indulges my weird whims. Who takes trips with me on the off chance we might see moosen. Who sometimes makes a steak dinner better than anything Ruth’s Chris or Morton’s is serving up, and who always drives me to the airport when I’m off on another adventure, kisses me goodbye, and reminds me that he loves me.
I’d go to the mattresses for all of them without a second thought, because, frankly, several of them know where the bodies are buried and because without them, I’d be lost.
I have a family that is mostly intact. I’ve felt the loss of matriarchs and patriarchs, of beloved uncles and family friends I once thought of as surrogate parents. Each loss has become a reminder of family itself, of love, of togetherness, of how deeply we belong to one another even as the seats around the table begin to empty.
Despite my general optimism, I’ve started to live more in the now, because I’ve grown acutely aware of borrowed time and the absence of any guaranteed tomorrow. I sometimes wish I’d understood the meaning of family when I was younger, but I’ve come to learn it’s something that has to grow on you over time, like moss… or maybe fungus. You have to grow old to understand what old means. You have to experience loss to comprehend the hollowness it leaves behind. And you cannot fully understand love until you’ve stepped out of the light it once provided. But each loss, in its own way, brings you closer to those who remain in the void and learn to share that space with you.
But through it all, I know I have a place to call home, even if it isn’t brick and mortar or tied to a single point on a map. Sometimes family is forty-seven text notifications bitching about the Penguins’ power play.
Home, like family, isn’t always simple. Love and belonging come with their own messiness, their own friction. Because comfort doesn’t erase complexity. Family, like time, teaches in layers; some soft, some sharp.
I’ve also felt the strain that politics and pride can bring to a family, and I’ve lamented the silliness of those silences. The stubbornness that builds walls where laughter used to live. Yet even those moments have carried lessons. I no longer see myself as a child at the whim of adults trying to mold me, or as an adult bending to other adults who believe they still can. It’s a strange dance. The old and the young, elders and youngers, respect and mutual understanding. Learning to be cautious and kind, yet steadfast, confident, and self-advocating. It has taught me to love without question or condition, and to forgive, but never to cave.
The same lessons have found their way into every other corner of my life, especially my work.
I have a job I enjoy and take pride in, work that still challenges me, that still matters. The kind of work that sometimes keeps me up at night and wears me thin, yet always reminds me I’m part of something bigger than myself, that my days are spent doing something that outlives the hours it takes.
I’ve finished my education as far as degrees go, but the learning hasn’t stopped, it’s just changed shape.
Now it looks like airports and conversations and quiet mornings where the lesson is simply being present.
I travel. I wander. I wonder. I explore.
Not to escape, but to keep learning what it means to be alive in all the small, ordinary ways, because the world keeps getting bigger the older I get, and each place teaches me something new about who I was, who I am, and who I’m still becoming.
Because no matter how far I go, the journey always circles back to me. Every new horizon holding up a mirror, reminding me that growth isn’t just about the miles traveled, but the grace earned along the way.
I still sometimes cry into my pillow, and I know heartache doesn’t fade with age, but I also know it isn’t the end of the world. It just shifts the landscape. And it’s up to me to decide how I want to walk it.
To all the little girls and boys out there, the ones who think thirty or forty is old, just wait. It really does get better with age. You get better with age.
If you have a dream, chase it. If you want to go somewhere, buy the ticket. Money is something you can always make tomorrow, and things just gather dust. Real living happens at the intersection of let’s do it and holy shit, I’m terrified.
So do it scared. Live life on the precipice between caution and the wind. That’s where the good stories come from anyway.
Because that’s the secret no one tells you about getting older, it’s not about slowing down; it’s about finally knowing when to jump.
It was an honest question, I don’t think he was being a jerk about it or anything. It just got me thinking… And that got me trolling…And that got me writing…(I’m worried this is going to become a habit).
Harriet Tubman is ugly, 2) This is just one more plan by President Obama to ruin our nation (I think the term Obamanize was actually used), and 3) Most of the people complaining don’t have the faintest clue what it is they’re actually complaining about. Take the meme on the left. I seriously cried laughing. Now, the original poster, MT News, meant this as a knock against the current social media outcry over the Tubman decision. BUT, as it has been passed about the webs it has become a representation of hatred as more and more people share it because they believe the sentiment behind the wording, rather than understand the irony behind the image.
While in office Jefferson organized the Louisiana Purchase, doubling the size of the US and sent Lewis and Clark on their mission to explore that new territory. He stood up against the British and signed into law an act forbidding the importation of slaves into the United States. His policies toward Native Americans were seen as more humane than most (for the time period) and he believed in a policy of assimilation for most indigenous people. He is regarded as one of the greatest presidents of our country. BUT…Jefferson was a slave owner. He participated in the buying, selling, and inheriting of slaves. He owned over 600 slaves in his lifetime and supposedly had an affair with one of his slaves, Sally Hemings, who bore his illegitimate children. In all honesty, Jefferson is one of my favorite presidents, but there is definitely room to debate his position on our current currency because of his role in slavery.
Diary of A Kitten Addict 