Tru Dat

'It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are'
e. e. cummings; poet, painter, total dudemeister

So yeah, jeez, ok, alright. I'm 27 now.

I'm not one who fears getting older. In fact, in a weird way, I've always kind of looked forward to it. I never felt 'right' as a kid. Something was always a bit off in a way I was never able to articulate. I think, looking back, it was just that being older than your years has significant drawbacks. It's a cruel trick of nature that the ones who feel most deeply will always have a rough deal - those sensitive, artistic, shy, clever children that phone up Classic FM to request Elgar for their mum will never fit in. Fact. It will take years and years to work out that it doesn't matter that they don't fit in because no-one does really (just some people are better at hiding it) when all you're taught as a child (by everyone! Peers, teachers, parents, tv) is how important it is to fit in. Anyway, now I'm no longer an old soul in a young body. My body is starting to catch up.

Twenty-seven was always the age is my head when I needed to start getting my shit together with the view that I would have everything tied up in neat little packages by the time I was 30. That was always, always the plan ('The Plan' is everything). Twenty-seven always seemed, not old, but the time when you should start Corinthians-ing it up: When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.

I am fully supportive of anyone being a total asshole up to and including the age of 25, you then have a years grace period once aged 26 to learn how not to be a total asshole anymore (check. Ish) but after that it's destination Adult Central, baby. Population: You. Because of this, 27 has always seemed a bigger milestone to me than 25 ever did. I did go a little loopy when I hit that marker though for reasons twofold:
1) I am me
2) Quarter of a century? That's O-L-D
But then I got there and nothing seemed very different. Which has always been the case thus far, you open your eyes on the anniversary of the day you were pushed into the world screaming and covered in gross, and nothing seems greatly different. Change either bashes you over the head and forces you to accept it or creeps up slowly and in tiny little increments makes you a different person year on year in ways you will never really be able to acknowledge. There are some that claim we never really change, that we are doomed to live out our lives in a twirling repeat upon repeat of mistakes we have always made and will always make. To those people I say this: Groundhog Day is an instructional video, not just an enjoyable movie with Bill Murray committing suicide in amusing ways and getting slapped a lot by Andie McDowell (as in: he has to make every mistake possible, sometimes more than once, but does eventually learn from those mistakes and changes significantly enough so that only then is he allowed to move forward. Which is what we all have to do. Though the desire to change for changes' sake - not romantic, material gain - is what galvanizes that forward motion and is only made possible because he literally has no other fucking choice. So maybe those people are right - no-one ever does change - UNLESS, of course, there's really no other viable option).

I digress. This is the year that I was supposed to be doing the job of my dreams (check. Ish. Still holding out for Dakota Clown College), the year I get my own place to live (gimme till May - I'm working on it), the year when I meet my Barack Obama (I am still holding out hope him and Michelle will adopt me. They appear to have the perfect relationship), and generally start getting my ducks in a row. It may be because of the pressure I have always put on this mystical age but I woke up on the day I turned 27 and felt, for the first time ever on a birthday, different from the day before. Different how? Hard to say. Taller? Maybe just my back was a littler straighter. Stronger? Maybe the burdens I've been carrying fell away a little. More solid? Maybe all that cake has had more of an effect than I would like (Truth). But all in all what I do know is that it takes courage to grow up and become who you really are. Maybe it's just that I now have that courage.