Everything I Want For My Birthday

I'm quite fond of being twenty-two years old. In retrospect, it was a good year, so I’m a bit sad to see it go. In a week, I will be twenty-three, facing the same existential dread of growing old that birthdays always bring about. Another reminder that I am not a little girl anymore. But I digress. 

Here is everything I want for when I turn 23. 

• A window facing East, so I can wake up to the sun shining into my bedroom every morning, even in the dead of winter. 

• An endless supply of extremely crunchy green grapes. Especially when they are out of season. 

• One more weekend from the spring of 2022. 

• One Direction reunion 

• A midnight walk after long, drunk, wistful sex. Hot tea in a mug and good conversation included. 

• A home library

• My parents to never suffer, for them to continue living a happy and healthy life. 

• My cat to live longer than nine lives. 

• To never lose my love for writing. To continue writing until my hands give out and my brain is a pile of mush, unable to form any more coherent thoughts. Only then will I put the pen down.

• A six-star read that will change the trajectory of my life.

• To fall in love again, unabashedly. Well, more so to be unafraid of falling in love again. To overcome my fear of opening up to someone new, to stop reminding myself of the pain and immense grief I endured the last time I fell in love. To have someone I can write letters to again, someone who reminds me of quotes from my favorite books I read, someone who sounds like my favorite song. To have someone to come home to, to dance around the kitchen in our underwear, to idle in bed together on a Sunday morning. To fall in love again.

• The extinction of overhead lighting. 

• A red leather journal 

• To sleep in a little longer. 

• The best to the person that I will never speak to again, even though I will always think about them on their birthday. 

• A couple of years living in Berlin again

• To continue dreaming, to continue hoping, even when it can end in disappointments. 

• One more conversation with my old best friend. To sit in the park with her one more time and catch up about her life over the past couple of years. To let her know that there is still an empty spot in my life that only fits the shape of her. To hug her one more time. 

• To call my mom more. 

• To finally figure out what I want to do with my life. Or at least get a little bit closer to figuring it out. 

• To stop thinking about getting older on my birthday every year. 

And my final wish would be to hold hands with 11-year-old me and tell her that she has everything to look forward to. To celebrate with 16-year-old me and tell her that her life is really just beginning. To comfort 19-year-old me, to hug 20-year-old me, to tell them that the best years of her life are right around the corner. To sit with freshly 22-year-old me over a cup of coffee and tell her that everything will be okay. To tell her that 22 will be a year of colossal growth, of getting one step closer to being the person she has always wanted to be. 

I have shed so many layers of my past self, scrubbing away memories and moments until I have become someone completely new. It’s so violent. At what point does it become murder? Ridding the world of the girl that I once was, over and over again. Murder or sacrifice? Sacrifice or baptism? Happy birthday to me. Here is my gift, guaranteed every year: the crucifixion of the version of myself I left behind over the past twelve months. The birth of a new woman, every year. 

One more wish, the last one I promise. Twenty-three: please be nice to me. Please be gentle with me. I am almost ready for you.