Last night was as perfect as any birthday could be. A house full of my bests, "Age of Consent" always, birthday cake and crumble and cupcakes, and my crowd surfing dream realized in the form of 24 birthday bumps. The details may be blurred, but I do know that everything was hazy glowy happy and I don't think I stopped smiling once.
Since I turned fifteen, I realize I've only ever spent one other birthday single. And I may have been boyless last night, but I was in no way alone. No, not one bit. The rooms were warm with love and who needs texts when they always come a little too late and they always are just texts and nothing more.
Everytime I go home, my parents seem older than they were the last time I left. The signs are small but telling. A missed turn. The way my dad holds the wheel a bit tighter than before. The names my mom now forgets. The story that never gets told quite right. And everytime I leave, the panic sets in and I wake with tears streaming down my face and the nightmare of life without them. They are fragile and fading and even though I know they are stronger than I think, time keeps passing and they are becoming more fragile and they are stil fading and their stories aren't being told and so why don't I ask them about these stories sometime? I worry that one day the stories I tell of my parents will only be just that. Mere stories of fragile and fading memories to people who never felt my mom's warmest warmth and my dad's big beautiful heart.
But how do you tell two people who don't see themselves as fragile or fading what you fear and how do you hug these two people you love more than anything in a way that says everything you feel?
Last weekend fell away and I missed a boy who isn't worthy of being missed and then I fell away, too, but when I fell, I fell backwards. I turn twenty-four in six days, and I am scared of this number and the changes it may bring with it so last weekend I rewound instead. My twenty-third was the best and full of change and I would not change a thing. But twenty-four sounds too big and real and grown-up, and so sometimes it's easier to put up walls and hibernate then face what waits a week ahead.
But this weekend I did not miss any boy at all. And it may have felt like -24 outside, but I refused to hide away. I went out with pink lips and big hopes and I was happy because I realized twenty-three was the best because it was the first year I'd done alone and isn't there something really amazing about such independence and self-knowledge? My happiness was mine and my sadness was only mine, too, and so if I fall away one weekend I can come back stronger than ever the next.
And stronger than ever was I when I realized that he really is the dirtiest of dirties and nights of spooning don't make up for months of lies. And stronger than ever was I when I realized that the boy from last winter will still never take off his coat for me and I never really liked him all that much to begin with. And the strongest was I when I realized it's taken me a year to get over the last boy that actually mattered and in that realization comes the hope of finally moving on and moving away from these dirty boys and these boys who'll never stay to talk.
I like to think my year was like this song. Slow but steady, beautiful but still sad, and there may have been something wrong with my heart for most of it, but twenty-three still managed to build and grow and that tambourine kicked in right at the end when it was needed the most.
This house was old and forever dirty but it was the first house I thought of as a home that didn't belong to my parents and it was my home because I did so much growing between its sage green walls and rambling three floors.
It had a large, forest green wrap around porch that I now wish I had spent more time on. Inside, it had a real working fireplace and two living rooms and flowers stained into the windows and arched doorways and the tallest windows and so much light. The kitchen was tiled green and white and there was a tiny sun room off the kitchen that stored the remnants of last night's parties and one time my roommate opened the door to find a homeless man riffling through these remnants on a Sunday morning. There were two full washrooms and six bedrooms and curved staircases and secret hideaways for the cats under these staircases. There were more windows upstairs, too. And there was a little nook in the wall that never got filled quite right. The backyard was long and wide and full of the biggest tree and the most unsafe firepit. My roommates once caught a couple out there under that tree and amongst the bushes. My bedroom had four closets and two windows that led onto a roof I used to welcome spring and summer. And there was the biggest tree outside those two windows, too, and the sun would shine through the branches of those trees to wake me every morning.
The house creaked and groaned and every shutting of a door was like a whisper. It was always full of people and spills and too much garbage. But it was also what I woke to on the first day of school and what I came home to after my last exam for two years. And it held my hand as I sat late into the night typing essay after essay or to boys two hours across the 401. It was a room in a house that we painted together and then broke up in twenty months later. It was the last place I ever spoke to him. It was a room and a house that saw me welcome new boys into my life back when I thought there could never be anyone else. It saw new sleepovers and heard new phonecalls and it was the house I went back to after first seeing him on the street in the rain and knowing I would never ever forget his face and knowing that I would oneday hold that face.
Today I can still look at this picture and hear the sounds of traffic passing by and remember how it felt to round the corner and be greeted by the grandness that was this house and those two years. When I think of this house, it is always the beginning of spring and the sun always stays out later than it ever actually does and there is a lightness in the air and there is anticipation and hope and because of all this, this house will forever be home even if it's just now a mere home in my memories.
Please tell me how to put down the phone when the drinks start flowing and the good times keep rolling and please tell me how to not want to share this feeling with a boy. Even if this boy is no no no no good.
Last night was as perfect as any birthday could be. A house full of my bests, "Age of Consent" always, birthday cake and crumble and cupcakes, and my crowd surfing dream realized in the form of 24 birthday bumps. The details may be blurred, but I do know that everything was hazy glowy happy and I don't think I stopped smiling once. 
