30/30.

and here i am. a week later, a week older. no, a year older. but a week further into something new.

it has been a fairly intense week. fitting for the changing of the decades. not that i have ever been one for gigantic birthday celebrations, but somehow this one ended up being a two-day affair. an affair to remember, and then forget, and then remember in bits and pieces.

friday was the new york birthday. it started at zum schneider, a bustling beer hall on avenue c. we toasted impossibly tall glasses of beer, and moved on into the night. a night that stopped at a few more watering holes, a friend's impromptu house party, and finally, a karaoke place, where i squawked an earnest rendition of journeys 'don't stop believing'. and i didn't stop believing, until the next day, when i believed for a few brutal moments that i wouldn't make my 4 pm flight to toronto.

yes, i made the ill-advised (but ultimately well-advised) decision to head back to toronto for a sunday wedding. and somehow, i managed to get to newark. to stumble onto my plane. to look out the window at the clouds in the magnificent skies and contemplate all the gloriously embarrassing cliches that you're allowed to contemplate on your 30th birthday, alone in the sky.

and i made it. and then i made it out again, for a lovely dinner with my oldest friends, and then onto the crooked star, and red light, where my other old friends were gathered to celebrate me being old, too.

sunday, i watched two new-but-old friends get married in a gorgeous ceremony in the courtyard of my university. and then danced and danced until my feet hurt and reminded me that i was 30, not 19. though, truth be told, any dancing in heels at any age would leave you limping. a delightful evening, indeed.

and then. nieces. and love. and family. and love.

and then back to new york. and so happy to be back. tonight we established some sort of club. a neighbors sort of gathering.

a i should know what i'm talking-about-but-i-am-a-bit-tired-ing.

i can't articulate now, what i wanted to, a few hours ago, but here's to spontaneity.

and life, really.

writing a letter.

and it feels really strange. strange because it's something on paper, with less room to go back and edit, re-edit. without the freedom to change the things that i’m trying to say into things that sound better than what i meant to say in the first place.

edit, re-edit.

no, this is supposed to be a true reflection of feeling. a true reflection of reeling.

i do feel compelled to copywrite the shit out of everything. and i really shouldn't, should i. there's that thing called spontaneity, which is so very refreshing, so very romantic, so very very. and i don't think i've lost it, no. after all, i still make plenty of unmeasured decisions, say things without thinking, say things when i'm drinking.

but in the writing, oh the writing. it becomes difficult to just write without re-reading, and in re-reading, wincing, and in wincing, changing, and in changing, moving further away from you, because nearness is honesty and distance is just, well, far.

edit, re-edit.

mayday mayday.

ok, so it's more like may 4th. i am sadly late for any sort of dancing around the maypole or even a couple cries for help over the airwaves. no, all i can do to celebrate the arrival of this the merry month of may is groggily rub my eyes and realize.

the time, the time, oh flying.
the good writing habits, dying dying.
the reader rolling eyes and sighing.

no, but seriously. may? mais, oui.

i suppose this is the moment i should start waxing pathetic about leaving my twenties behind, but i'm actually kind of excited.

excited to be really becoming a woman. kidding.
excited about really becoming an adult. kind of kidding.
excited about being taken seriously. seriously.

ok, not really. i am just complacent. but not the smug kind of complacent. just happy to be here. in this surreal little city. in this surreal little life. i mean, 10 years ago, i certainly faced the possibility of not making it this far. which is horrendously melodramatic, but it's true. i read a fantastically honest cancer memoir over the weekend, and it blew my sad little mind in the way it treated the disease and the experience with no kid gloves whatsoever. it was messy and ugly and he didn't make himself a hero for battling a horror that most will never have to. because as he put it, 'if you're an asshole before cancer, you'll still be an asshole after". and while i hope that i'm not one of those, i think i'm still the same person. just alive.

i would like to think that the experience of having a real life experience well before i was supposed to gave me a bit of perspective that carried me through my twenties.

but really, i fumbled through it blindly like most people fumble through every decade. with the beautiful human tendency to fuck it all up, then learn from it, then fuck it up again.

may my thirties be no different.