A Coming of Age

I had another birthday this week. I find birthdays to be a bit like a stalker. They seem to creep up behind you (although technically, they're in front of you) and you're never quite sure how you're going to feel when they inevitably make themselves known. Some seem harmless enough, but others are quite frightening indeed.

This one was more like your garden variety peeping tom. Our eyes met through the window and then it went away, acknowledged but left shrugging, achieving little bang for it's buck. It caught me with my pants well and truly up this year.

At this age, I know myself reasonably well. I'm not an old friend, but I'm familiar enough to anticipate my reactions, dislikes and sometime idiosyncrasies with highly attuned accuracy; to within a decimal point.

My flaws, which were once foe, are now more like friend, revealing an obstacle course for me to navigate around myself. Unlike Jennifer Hawkins' flaws, which even stark naked and sans photoshop you need a microscope to identify, mine are crystallising, the embryos of ice cubes.

Each year, I see myself more plainly than before. I'm empowered to surpass the boundaries of my character, many of them constructed by me, some with early foundations built by others. Now I choose to see the land clear, can deconstruct and re-construe. Or not.

As I stand at station thirty-three, watching my thirty-second year depart, I am grateful for the eleven thousand, six hundred and eighty-two days that have brought me to right here.

Me/I greet this new age with a raw and dewy calm.