 Well, here it is. I am officially 28. That’s 6 years after I’ve started writing in here. 7 years after a wonderful graduation dinner with my family. 10 years after I left my high school, wide-eyed and innocent. 11 years after a first boyfriend. 16 years after my Dad last took me to the park. 4 days before my Dad goes for a bypass surgery. How time flies.
I found myself checking for wrinkles in my bedroom mirror the first thing I turned 28. I took a really good look at myself. Not in a vain, ‘checking myself out’ kind of way. Rather, I took a good look at my own physical self to examine how/if I have changed at all. I didn’t think I looked any different. But I certainly looked… in a weird attempt to describe it, hardened. I looked hardened. It is easy to say we’re still clueless about the world even in our late twenties. Some of us have children and can’t believe how that happened. Some of us are finally working a job we love, to our own strange surprise. Some of us are still wandering around finding a place in this world. But no matter how much we claim we don’t know much about life, or no matter how much we say we have no clue how to be our age, the truth is, we have grown so much from that little person we used to be not long ago. Consciously or subconsciously, some parts of us are now becoming an adult, whether we’d like to admit it or not. Today, on my first day of being 28, here are the things that I am acutely aware of; 1. I get really sleepy after 11 pm, and strangely enough, I’m not complaining about it either. 2. I still don’t really know how loans work. 3. What the hell happened in Palestine historically? I know I made a promise to read it up 2 years ago, but… 4. I look at high school kids and immediately mutter to myself, “Kids.” 5. I don’t really care much to please a lot of people anymore. 6. Men? No clue whatsoever. Same like 5 years ago. 7. Small matters seem to bother me a lot less these days. 8. Fast food is disgusting. I don’t eat them anymore. 9. My parents are getting older. 10. Brad Pitt is NOT how he used to look. All that aside, there are certainly many other upsides that I have discovered upon being a year older. The late twenties is a wonderful place to be in life. You get the luxury of youth without being too naïve. You get the advantage of having so many possible prospects of how your life could be, with a similar amount of economical and emotional stability. You know your body really well by now. You know what works and what doesn’t. You know what you can and cannot tolerate. You know enough about life to stay cynical with a healthy dose of innocence somewhere in there. Your rational radar is much better than when you were a teenager. You understand more about what you want out of relationships. Most of all, you would by now have figured out, at least for a little bit, that growing older is beautiful blessing. Especially if you are learning so much from it, cushioned from the fall by the people you love. After all, what is life but a wonderful big learning adventure? Here's to a wonderful 28th year! (hopefully) |
