Last Day of My Life

…at twenty-three, that is.

Over the weekend I was suppose to have been in Orlando attending my dear friend’s nuptials. However, due a bunch of circumstances things didn’t work out that way. I forgot to cancel the days off with work so I ended up a five day weekend. I spent two days getting stuff done for my car (my first time having brand new tires!), helping Sarah clean out her garage, sewing my new purse, seeing old friends, then having birthday cake & ice cream with Mom. So in other words, I kept busy. I even started reading How to Be Single (this is not as desperate as it sounds). I’ve put out a lot of money on my car and none for me personally, but I think the reward is keeping my car in good repair.

I’ve already made a list of things that were firsts for the past year. It’s been an extrodinarly tough year as I realized the full-disappoint of the post-college life. However, I’ve also decided that I’ll no longer let depression rule my life. This is monumental in importance. I’ve felt better ever since I made this decision.

As for today, the last things on my mind at twenty-three is realizing Sarah is my Asheville best friend, death, love, my five year plan, and thinking about how my friends’ lives are heading in comparision to mine. Let’s break it down:

• I want to be buried when I die in a cheap box at Riverside Cemetery across town.
• Not a week goes by that I don’t think of my dead friend. I don’t think I’ll ever get past him dying at only twenty years of age.
• I don’t believe in marriage. It’s not the founding stone in my idea of relationships. It’s not the final goal. I can live w/o a man in my life.
• I described for my Dad today two men I’ve met who have really influenced what I am looking for in a man. I don’t think I can find someone who is everything I want. Then again, I am making this “ideal” man out of the best parts of two real life men.
• My five year plan: go to grad school, find a job in the field, move to Oregon or Washington State.
• And I just realized my five year plan now involves being twenty-nine that final year that I’m willing to conceive my own flesh and blood child. There are too many health problems in my family for me to dare have my own biological child past that year.
• Somehow my life ambition has changed from taking over Disney to being a mom whose child is proud of them.
• I don’t have any idea how to discipline or carry a small child around.
• I listened to Christina Aguilera to pump myself up before going to Mom’s house today.
• My junior prom dress came out of the closet today and despite having put on 10 lbs since high school, the dress fits better than it did before.
• I got two birthday greetings from people who know tomorrow is my real birthday but they’d be busy then.
• I spent some time envious of my friends’ married and already mothers lives these past couple of years. Then yesterday I laid in bed and realized that there is a sort of emptiness there too. While I fill my life up with stuff to combat the hunger and loneliness of trying to figure out what to do with myself, they divided themselves in two or more as they carried and gave birth to children. Seeing my middle school best friend with a little girl calling her “Mama!” is startling as this was the girl who pinched me repeatedly in 8th grade and would hawk boys with me out at the skating rink. While she’s got a good job, a mortage, two cars, a child, and a husband while I only own the contents of my room + a car, I don’t think her life is any better than mine. Not how I thought before this weekend. It’s just a different kind of loneliness. Even as she explained how motherhood is that tingling feeling of new love but every day and growing more intense as you love your child. I don’t envy her as I did.
• I flounced through my workplace tonight wanting to show off my pretty dress like the fool I am. I was rightfully disappointed when it didn’t matter.
• I saw Susan and that mattered.
• Elian, a new character by Shiver, was given a face today. I fell in love with him.
• I really like the forensics in the show Bones.
• I put the a/c in my window since this has been an impossibly beautiful weekend of 85 degree days and another one tomorrow. It was even hotter the day I was born.
• I’m wearing my embrodiered purple satin shoes to work tomorrow. I only wear them twice a year. My best friend gave them to me.
• Her calling me would be the best present.
• I’m listening to Rob Thomas’s “Here Comes the Night” and two songs by Bright Eyes: “The First Day of My Life” and “Lover I don’t have to love.”
• My lap is full of a very warm Celeste as she sleeps. Chii was just on my table and Dollbaby is probably on dad’s bed. The a/c blows cool behind. I wear my red robe over a light nightgown. I despise nightgowns but its getting very warm at night.
• My last meals for twenty-three were: KFC popcorn chicken, potato wedges, Dr. Pepper, Mountain Dew, vanilla cake, and strawberry ice cream.
• This weekend I stopped wearing the ring my ex gave me for my twenty-second birthday. I feel more like me w/o it.

I have to go to bed now so I can be up at 4:30am. I’ve been grateful for these days off and for today. This posting is less blog and more journal, but I think if I cannot be brutually honest and me on this webspace I’m paying for, what is the point? My wishes for twenty-four is to become more accepting of me, grow some plants, cook more, curse less, and be a success in grad school (if I get in).

Goodbye, twenty-three. I hardly knew ye.