Big Consequences

birthday

  • If I can live through this…

    If I can live through this…

    …I can do anything


    Well, I turned another year older this past week. Somehow. The only things that feel 31 about me are my bones and my proclivity towards nostalgia; everything else feels like I’m stuck somewhere around 25. Maybe it’s wishful thinking. Nothing since then has gone anywhere close to the way I once planned.

    Okay… I don’t think I ever had a plan. That’s my bad. #mybad

    This November will mark 5 years of living in Texas, taking care of my Mamaw. This past February was the 3-year anniversary of starting my medical transition, this March the 4-year anniversary of discovering where the hints were leading all along. Time has definitely marched onward despite needing to drag me along kicking and screaming.

    I feel like a lot of things have been very sudden– suddenly I find myself half-managing a mobile home park, suddenly I’m helping with ranch work, suddenly, suddenly, suddenly.

    Reader, to be honest, I’m burnt out. I keep pushing myself because others can (so why can’t I), but genuinely I had two non-medical excursions last year that I can consider significant breaks (overnight)– my fraternity’s convention last spring and seeing My Chemical Romance in August. Currently I only have one scheduled this year, in September, and it’s just a weekend. I need, like, a week minimum.

    Things aren’t all bad.

    I was diagnosed with Celiac disease, I’m treating my sleep apnea again, I’m walking a little bit daily to try to get myself back in movin’ shape, I started a GLP-1… I’m trying to take care of myself, one piece at a time, because somehow I made it this far.

    I’m trying to create more again. Maybe it’s not helping the burnout much, but I need to creatively output at this point for my own sense of… not totally wasting my life? I can’t really describe the feeling I get when I have no ideas or have ideas but no energy or time– it’s physical, deep in my skin, making me feel wrong.

    so cutieful (art by me)

    I keep wanting to make plans too. I want to know where my life could possibly be going. Everything is so hectic, though, and my life is always shifting. I spent a year and a half with one guy trying to plan our lives together, that didn’t work out well. Honestly, if you ask me, I want a week back on Lake Ontario to heal a bit from the last 4.5 years, then I can talk about the rest of my life. Everyone else can have their plans for me for now, because I can’t take that vacation at all in the foreseeable future, so I’ll figure out my own path when I have more strength to do so.

    …

    Anyways if you’re reading this go watch Trigun Stampede and then Trigun Stargaze.

     

     

  • 30 years old and it feels so… feeling

    30 years old and it feels so… feeling

    Hiiii it’s meeeee the Birthday Boy.

    It’s currently, stream of consciousness, as I’m writing this, 7:30pm on April 7th. It’s my 30th birthday.

    Birthdays are deeply complicated, aren’t they? (Only if you make them, Wolf!) Shut up, imaginary peanut gallery. My birthday this year has been a thing I’ve sincerely… worried about, to put it lightly.

    Let me put this in context:

    • I spent almost all the time from age 11 to about 18 intensely depressed. Birthdays were a bit of a break from that; some years were good and some years were just “fake-it-til-you-make-it” theatrics.
    • Once I got into college, I still had a lot of problems with my mental health, but I was finding myself. I was getting better, slowly but surely. My birthdays became a celebration of “I may be on borrowed time, but by the gods I’ve made it this far and that’s a miracle”.
    • That continued for a while. I was celebrating each revolution around the sun because By golly I fought and continue to fight so hard for this
    • Now… I’m 30.

    In the sitcom Friends, I remember at least one of the group having an existential crisis over turning 30, and at 12 or so I was like “wow that’s weird, why would they do that?”. That was naive of me. There’s a sense of “I should be [there]” or “I should have done [this]” by now.

    My curse is thus: I can’t give anyone an answer to “Where do you want to be in 5 years?” but I can sure get to self-imposed lifetime deadlines and go “Well I have failed and therefore am worth less than I was a day ago”

    Did I have an altogether bad day? No! But it also felt. Sort of empty for most of it?

    Then I got a robo-text from the Misha Collins number that finished the birthday wish with “I’m glad you exist” and I spent exactly 3 minutes in the bathroom sobbing before sewing myself back up to make supper for my mamaw and myself.

    I am, however, very thankful for the things I do have. My friends may all be very far away but they make me very happy. My family drives me nuts but I’m making it work. My passion for a lot of stuff has not been killed yet, which is probably a bonus at my age now.

    It’s almost 9 now because I’ve been getting distracted, but it’s been somewhat positive distractions.

    For those who are younger and also dread 30 for any sort of reason– I know I went into why I have been, but honestly? We don’t really have to worry about those milestones and deadlines.

    Every new day is another chance to reach a goal.

    And life, and love, and having fun doesn’t stop at age 30. I just lost sight of it because I’m staring down Father Time and what he’s doing in my Mamaw’s case. But there’s a big difference between 30 and 84! I can’t spend all my time thinking like I’m also 84!

    Reader, don’t you get caught up staring down the barrel of your future either. You’ll miss out on today.