Yesterday was my 21st birthday. Compared to some, that doesn’t seem like a whole lot of life to talk about. If you’d asked me 6 years ago if I thought I’d be where I am today, I would’ve certainly said no. Honestly, in that time of my life, I wasn’t sure I’d even make it to 21.
I find life rather fickle. We seem to spend all of our time trying to control for moments that have yet to be defined and worry over events that probabilistically won’t ever come to fruition. However, it’s what is implicit in this idea that makes life so incredibly exciting … that we never know what will happen until it is unfolding before us in real time. All we have is the now.
Throughout high school I suffered from severe acne, the type that developed into cysts and would throb painfully during Intro to Calculus. After a period of months I had exhausted all of my options (topical creams, antibiotics, etc) save for one final drug, Accutane (Isotrentinoin). Each course of Accutane runs for 6 months, and if you come off the drug and your acne returns, you start another 6 month course but at a higher dosage of the medication; I completed three 6-month-long courses.
The reason I mention this is because the side effects of Accutane severely crippled my interest in life and in living, to the point where I did not desire to continue to the next day of the week. I became a fundamentally different person. My relationship with my Dad shattered and that same painful throb seemed to permeate from the acne on my face into the recesses of my soul.
It is for this reason that I wasn’t sure that I’d be writing this today at the age of 21. I won’t say I was depressed, because it isn’t fair to those who do suffer from such horrible afflictions. Maybe I should’ve asked someone with a PhD to tell me it was so. But back home there’s a bridge down the street that overlooks this quaint beach, and as the bridge down by the beach turned from a method of transportation into infrastructure capable of far more heinous purposes, I knew that something was wrong, PhD be damned. This was real.
Today, now a day past 21, I also feel very real. I feel alive, very much so, in a way so fundamentally different than how I felt at 15 that I look back at those days in horror and disbelief. Yesterday I felt so overwhelmed with love and gratitude that all I could do was hug my friends and thank them for being in my life. Yes, there were some tears. No, I wasn’t embarrassed. Ok, I was a little embarrassed. But in a good way — the kind that you remember.
You see, I recognize I haven’t lived very long. I’m about a third the age of my Dad, and can reasonably expect to live through more decades than I can count with my right hand. But at 21 and a day, I also recognize that life is nothing more than a continued collection of moments, and that I experience moments at the same rate as everyone else, even my Dad.
For anyone wondering, things are really good between my Dad and I now. Sure there’s been hurt, the kind that still hurts, but I do my best remembering to remind him that I love him every time I drive up to visit the cottage-town where he runs his law firm, and I mean it every time I say it. And this is all a result of the individual moments that I’ve lived up until this point; all of those moments before Accutane, those during, and all of those moments afterwards.
I think that’s why life is so fickle. Because all we can do is live in each moment that comes before us, even when those moments are dull and we forget that we’re living through them, or when they suffocate us to the point where we no longer want any more moments, or when they are so incredible that they push tears out of our eyes to make room for the joy. They are all we have, and then they are gone, leaving nothing more than a whisper of themselves as a memory in our minds.
Yesterday was my 21st birthday and while the tears have dried I am still left with the joy. I owe so much credit to so many people for both my making it here, and for the intense love of life that I hold today. To anyone reading this, thank you both for your attention and for sharing any and all of the moments that we have enjoyed together. Thank you to all of my friends, and all of my incredible family, and to those whom I categorize as both.
I wasn’t sure I’d make it here, but damn am I ever glad I did. Thank you.
