Friday, December 10, 2010

32

didnt i just turn thirty a little while ago? i cant imagine where those two years went. time out of time is simultaneously so much longer and so much shorter than 'real' time. there are days i feel like it as been ages since something happened to me and if i count back it was 2 weeks ago. it just feels like a long time cuz it was 3 cities ago, or something silly. thousands of miles and tons of conversations with disparate friends since. i say, 'weren't we just talking about this?' to people all the time and then remember it was with that other friend in a distant city a few days previous. 'last week' could mean across the country, and 'last year this time' i could have been anywhere (but was prolly ann arbor.)
yet still, even taking all of this into account, how the f**k did i get to be 32? all joking about peter pan aside, i really dont know how to be an adult. ive said for 12 years that im about 7 years behind everyone else in my development. which would make me 25. which, in the understanding of the stages of a person's life, makes more sense. part of this is just my inability to figure things out, and part of it is, i may be a 32 year old 'woman', but im a 25 year old boi. i dont think i lost all those 7 years at the same time, tho. i think i was totally caught up in my gender until i was 13. then all my friends started to be boy crazy, and that was when my boi lost about 9 months. then, when i got my period at 15, i lost another 6 months. then, being boy crazy myself and figuring out how to be a girl thru 16 and 17, i lost a year and a half. then from 18 thru 19, when i dated my first serious boyfriend, i lost 2 years. then, when i was 22, and had just graduated college and moved back home, i lost another 9 months, and from 24 to 26, the time between china and seattle when i lived in chicago and was super girly, i lost another 2 years. and one day in july of 2007 when i had to be a bride's maid at my cousin's wedding, i simultaneously lost 6 months and aged a year. so here i am, a young man in a somewhat older woman's body. and still people look at me (and read me as masculine) and think im about 22. and im 6 months away from my 10 year college reunion. i will get carded till i go grey (which will be in about 3 years).
another year older and though im still homeless, im a lot closer to being settled in myself as to who i am and what i want. and hopefully, how to get it. at least how to start on the path to getting it. my year of being 32 will entail traveling to mexico for the first time, going to 4 weddings (2 queer, 2 not), buying a house, and figuring out how to stay in one place for an extended period of time. this last adventure will hopefully include a shit ton of writing time. i am working on getting rid of all my excuses for not being productive so i can get over myself and just sit down and write. house first, then book. this time next year i hope to be deep into my book about genderqueer artists. check in with me then.

1 comment:

barlow said...

this inspired me. you take your time. or time takes you...