It's been two years since I sat on my bed with
my laptop and watched the last few seconds of my teenaged life tick
away. It really doesn't feel as though it's been that long. Today I am
a twentysomething. A friend turned 22 last fall; she said it was more
emotionally crippling than turning 21 or 20 because 22 was the age at
which she stopped feeling cripplingly sorry for accident victims.
"I read the newspaper and see that someone aged anywhere from one hour to 21 has died and I feel horrible because they were so young,"
she says. "But anyone 22 or older, and it's just 'Oh,
someone died. Sad.' And if I die, they're going to write my name,
comma, 22."
Twenty-two lacks the unparalleled scariness
of 21 because my father was 21 when my parents got married.
Twenty-four, then, will be difficult; as he likes to remind me, when he
was 24 he was a father.
I see no children
in my immediate future. My family's genetic history (riddled with
cancer and heart disease) makes me question whether me having a
child (or children) is even morally justifiable. I am very much aware
of the fact that I may well be a human time bomb.
But there's time to figure that out, you know.
I have come to an unsettling and rather embarrasing discovery: I don't actually hate journalism. Surprise.
The
major online news agency at which I've worked for
close to two years (in some capacity) recently decided to throw a
writing shift my way. It went, by all accounts, fabulously. I wrote
four stories that day, none of which required substantial word surgery
or caused copy editors to swear. People kept saying nice things. It was
fun, good Lord. I practically bounced out of the newsroom when the shift was over.
I kind of don't ever want to do anything else.
I
think my fundamental problem with journalism was the way it might
potentially lead to invading other
people's privacy. This job required me to condense and reorganize
information. That's good enough for me.
As
I may have mentioned, completing school has made me
resolutely more aware of my own mortality. Today is the first day of
school for many people; it is my first non-first day of school. My
first day of school was my fifth birthday.
Oh, life. Why must you come full circle so often?
I
went out for dinner with my campus paper buddies
tonight; when they found out it was nearly my birthday they insisted on
giving my liver a nice workout. "I'm getting old," I told one guy who's
just turned 20. "You're not getting old," he said. "Just getting better with age."
"Yeah," another agreed. "You're rotting, but slowly."
Fair point.
My grandmother still
ails; I always knew she was never going to get better, but it hurts to
watch her get worse. I haven't gone to see her in a while. Maybe that
makes me a bad granddaughter, but it hurts like hell. My grandfather
still insists on signing the birthday cards he gives me and my sister
from the two of them. I imagine he's clinging to the fact that part of
her is still here for dear life. I can't.
Whenever he comes over
for dinner, because God knows the food they serve him at the senior's
residence isn't terribly appetizing, he seems to need to talk about her all the time. I find
it unsettling. I suppose it helps him.
If I could have one wish it would be to have my Gram back to her old self.
And to beat my mom at Scrabble.
I have strange lifelong dreams.
I'm
moving. This isn't the big forever-type move; I'm going to live with
four friends for about a year until the job situation is somewhat more
stable, then it's (one hopes) off to my own place.
We were out
tonight when a friend and
colleague and I looked at each other and realized -- really realized for what may have been the first time -- that we didn't have to go to school anymore.
"Shut
up," one of the returning students said, to much laughter. We laughed
too. I can't speak for him but I was personally feeling beyond creeped
out. A former English professor of mine -- the most brilliant man I'd
ever met -- retired the year he taught my class. As the year wound to a
close, he said it wasn't going to sink in until that September, when
the students he'd taught and the professors he worked alongside went
back to school and he didn't.
I understand what he meant now.
My
once and future roommate is in London for an internship. The sun will
rise over his hostel not long from now. He is blogging every detail
meticulously. I don't blame him. That's what I'd do.
My love is going to make me dinner
tonight. My friends bought me drinks. I'm buying a
camera.
I'm going to die someday, but I have
love and I have stories to tell and I never took things for
granted. And even though it stings, I had my
Gram for 20 years before things truly went to hell.
Life's all right. As Warren Zevon reflected as he neared his impending death, "Enjoy every sandwich."