Another Year I Claim

Today is my birthday. I love my birthday, chiefly because it is a wonderful excuse to go to the zoo. I love my birthday, but I hate getting older. With every year the expectations rise, and sometimes I’m just not sure I can do it. Time forces me to change when I don’t feel ready, and it changes other people and I’m not ready for them to change either.
Can everybody just freeze, just stay the same for a second? Just let me stay the same? Just let me stay the same, and stay the same with me. My heart is tired, and yours must be too; you’ve told me how heavy it is. Why do you want to lay upon it yet another burden? Let’s just stay the same. Or at least don’t look at me like that, when you change and I don’t. Please don’t expect me to keep promises I never made.

It’s difficult to live passionately without bumping into anyone else. At times I seem to careen from wall to wall, crashing into everything in my spastic path. Other times I seem to be paralyzed, existing directly in the way of the rest of the world but unable to move. I seem to be incapable of feeling anything halfway; full motion or dead stop.

For all my passion, sometimes I feel like I’ve already said everything I have to say. I’m a glass bottle poured out of fresh words, every one dribbled out and absorbed into an earth thirsty to suck up everything I have to give. Leaving me, at times, an empty vessel. I very much like having things to say, even if no one hears them.

I think Jesus likes passionate people. People who are passionate in stoic, quiet ways, and in ways that are loud and full of bright colors and mistakes. I think even passion misdirected might make Him smile somehow, because therein lies potential. At least, I hope.

I think Jesus would get a drink with me, and I don’t think He minds too much when I curse. I think Jesus would sneak the dogs scraps under the table and be snarky and get pissed at mean people, and show it. After all, Jesus is a passionate person Himself.
Jesus’ ministry didn’t start until He was thirty; maybe it’s ok that at twenty-three I haven’t done very much with my life yet, despite being a passionate person. But every birthday, I feel like the clock is ticking.

Tick-tock, Grad-u-ate. Tick-tock, start-ca-reer. Tick-toc, a-part-ment. Tick-tock…oops-too-slow.

But tomorrow I will wake twenty-three-and-one-day, unable to live any more quickly than I do; tomorrow I will wake just the same. Tomorrow I will wake and my socks will not match any more than they do today, and my hair will be only marginally longer. Change seems to take so long, yet it is so hard to keep up with.

But for the moment I’ll just try to keep up with the animals at the zoo; with the first fireflies of the season. I’ll keep up with a book, with a conversation, with some chocolates, with an art project and a glass of wine.
After all, it’s my birthday. I can do what I want.


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