23 and me.

So I will be 23 tomorrow. And this is truly the most irrelevant birthday yet.

I don't even feel as though it's happening. This will be my second birthday in quarantine, and celebration feels like a distant memory that belongs to someone else.

That could not have been me planning my 21st birthday in my college suite senior year. Could not have been me converting my college accomodations into a club. (I couldn't even tell you what the inside of a club looks like anymore.)

Time has ceased to exist in my mind, so the 29th can no longer conjure up the feeling of anticipation that I seem to recall it once did.

There are two sides to this coin:

-- sadness over the loss of something I used to enjoy

-- numbness toward the pressures of growing older

I joke about being upset that I am reaching my mid-20's, but in reality, my brain hasn't had the chance to catch up to my age yet. When people ask me, I frequently say I'm 20. And that's only a recent development; for the longest time, I hadn't aged past 18. The experiences that would have justified aging for me simply haven't been happening. I look back on years and struggle to associate the events. It's not that nothing has happened, it has just all become a wash.

23 is such an odd number. I haven't felt this disconnected from an age since 17. I hated that number as well. Or maybe 19; both are just transitional years in my book.

Is that what this year is? A transition? I could be down for that. I thrive on change. I have told myself that if all I do in 2021 is move to New York, then this year will be a success. A belated birthday present to myself.

Tomorrow will feel different. I will have that tingling sense that something about this day is special. But I won't be able to do anything about it, and that's what makes me most upset. I won't be able to share it in the same way.

What I would give to gather up my friends and just spend a night together in my childhood home's backyard around a fire pit.

I want to play manhunt and have the cops show up because my horrid, stick-in-the-mud neighbors saw "kids running around."

I want to have a sleepover in my basement in which we never actually go to sleep. We just stay up until we are completely incoherent and see what comes of it.

I want to walk around my campus in the dark and explore the buildings we know all too well, but not in this way. Not when they are empty shells, illuminated only by emergency lights in the hallways.

I want to plan a night out in London in which a group of us (that is way too large) takes over Leicester Square and drinks free shots that look blue in the way that drano looks blue.

I want it all back. And how could I not, when moving forward is made to be as complicated as it is presently?

But 23 will come. And tomorrow will be a nice day, just a complicated one.

Cheers

xx