birthdays

12/7/23

four days ago was my 21st birthday. it loomed over me all year and in all honesty, felt more like a threat than a cause for celebration. i went back and forth with myself and my friends, cancelling and reinstating birthday plans over and over again. nothing felt right and i didn't feel like i had any reason to celebrate, anyway. less than two months ago, my relationship of a year and some change came to an end, leaving me devastated and lost. my birthday meant that the day was about me, and all i wanted to do was leave my body and be someone else.

the weeks and days leading up to my birthday were, to be completely transparent, dreadful. how could i think about partying when it felt like i was dying? but my friends....oh, my absolute patient angels of friends, made it their business that i would have a good day, and celebrate with the people that loved me. and i think all of their love was impossible to ignore, because i started feeling it more and more every day. at my friend's apartment, i smiled and popped a bottle of champagne (that immediately went up my nose when i took it to the head) and screamed and laughed, drunk off of vanilla vodka, my first legal purchase of alcohol. and even though it wasn't what i had imagined earlier this year, while i looked around the room of the people that were there to celebrate me that night, my heart felt warm.

even before my birthday though, i had more than enough proof that the people around me are people that i'm lucky to have in my life. i mean, who else would open the door for me, a mess of tears and snot in my bleach-stained thrasher new york hoodie and dirty crocs? since the breakup, i've been through what felt like the entire range of human emotion. having a safe place away from myself proved to be life-saving. i felt and still feel more love than ever for the people that offered me their bedrooms to fall apart and talk about life, love, heartbreak and the future, or chatted with me via imessage until the early hours of the morning even though we haven't seen each other since the eighth grade. i didn't know it, but i'd desperately needed the conversation in the car post-renaissance: a film by beyonce about how to pursue our creative dreams, and how yes, K, you absolutely are model material. the idea to start this site may have never come without them, and i may have never taken a step outside my comfort zone. i may have never bloomed.

i say all of this to say that to all of the people who have supported me through all of this, this is for you! the people that encouraged and inspired me to put myself out there, the people that continue to catch me when i fall. this season of my life is about more than just a breakup--it's about my own personal metamorphosis (a word and concept that i've been increasingly obsessed with). but as much as it's about me, it's about you as well. the universe is funny--sometimes things happen just the way they're supposed to right after they crumble to pieces. to everyone who's shown up for me in any way recently, thank you. i love you. thank you.

p.s., can you tell venus is in scorpio?