25 years and a few hours older.

It’s my birthday. And I brought peaches and yogurt for breakfast, having raced out the door towards the middle school I’m subbing for. Almost late, the usual.

Alas, the peach juice spilled all over my lunch bag and there are no paper towels anywhere. Only thin tissues. Literally, tissue paper. I’m sitting here looking at the mess, and I have a flashback to when I was on a field trip in 6th grade and my apple sauce exploded all over my brown sack. As a 6th grader, I panicked. What the fudge was I going to do!? The sauce was everywhere! Sooo sticky and sweet and cinnamony. I couldn’t just sit there and lick clean my hands and ziplock bags like a kitten in front of my friends. Middle schoolers are creative in cruelty. Like hell I was going to put myself on the spot and go ask a teacher to lend a helpful hand. So, I continued to panic and just kind of tried to ignore that there was applesauce all over everything, in-between my fingers. That moment was recorded in my mental diary as: Trauma level 7, The Worst Lunch I Ever Had.

Here I am, 25 years old, and the same g.d. thing has happened. Although, this morning, I had a beautiful sunrise chasing me and I couldn’t help but shout thank you’s for my family and friends and families of friends and oh-my boyfriend. A thank you for my handmade bookshelf. A thank you for the dinner I get to have tonight with two people who occupy large spaces of my heart. A thank you for a job I generally enjoy right now. A thank you for the fact that each year, I become more at peace, more happy, more excited about the life I am living.

A quarter of a century IS a long time. But, my God, is it nice to be here and be so in love with it all. At 25 years, I’m licking peach juice off my hands. And it’s utterly delightful.