Chapter 257: The Child Is Gone

Okay, so it is the day after my birthday today and I have been able to take a little time to detach myself from the whole thing a bit, emotionally, and have come to realize that I was probably being a bit melodramatic about the whole thing. As I mentioned in last night's blog, my birthday weekend and the circumstances surrounding it brought up a lot of old issues and emotions in me that I didn't necessarily realize were still affecting me so strongly. I do feel like, all in all, my birthday weekend was a complete disaster. It had some really nice moments, courtesy of a few different people, but overall the whole thing was pretty wrecked.

One word that I would use to describe the experience of my 27th birthday would be sobering. Another word I would use would be shitty but we are going to focus on the word sobering here. So, why sobering? Well, it kind of forced me to confront a couple different truths about myself that I have long been aware of but I don't think ever really took the time to comprehend the real weight and gravity of. You see, the main thing that this birthday weekend forced me to deal with is the fact that I am, by all standards, an adult now. Gone are the days of being the center of the world to people like my Mother. No more will people make the effort to cater to my whims or see to my emotional needs like they did before. No more will people stop what they are doing to pay attention to or focus on me just because I happen to be feeling alone or neglected or unloved. No more will I be babied. Basically, what this weekend made me realize more than anything else is that, from this point on, I am in this fight alone. I am expected to take care of myself and never again will I truly be able to depend on anybody else to do it for me. I am at an age where my general well-being, whether they admit it or not, is not genuinely their concern. It isn't anybody else's responsibility to keep me happy or healthy anymore. Anything that I may need or want out of life is up to me; SOLELY up to me. I can't genuinely expect anything out of anybody else at this point... & I'm okay.

Still, thinking about this epiphany I have now had, it does seem like a very large, heavy, unmanageable thing to cope with. I mean, I know that I can. I assume that most people do at some point in their lives. Still, I can't help but think about how life used to be. I have spent so many years not really relying on myself for anything. There was always somebody else who could take on the responsibilities of my life, be it my Mom, my sister, or my best friend, I just always had somebody around who WOULD cater to my whims and do everything they could to make sure that I was happy and taken care of. Looking at it from where I'm standing now I realize that I completely took that for granted. It really is a shame, because I long for that feeling now. Like I said before, though... Those days are over.

Like Fiona Apple said, "The child is gone..."

I knew this day would have to come eventually but that is really no consolation to me now. Still, despite my initial reaction, I'm okay with it all. It's better this way, actually. I have always kind of scoffed at that whole concept of people talking about how they wish they could be a kid again. I hate the very essence of childhood - naivete and innocence; more like ignorance to me. I hate the idea of childhood because it really all equates to being unaware. I don't want to be unaware or naive or lacking in experience. That is not what life is about. Life, to me, is about one thing and one thing only - moving forward. THAT, more than anything else, is what this weekend has really been for me - one giant step forward, and on to the next plane of existence. It makes perfect sense to me now, the whole thing. My life is all about transcendence and, frankly, you simply cannot transcend when you tie yourself down to things in your life. Don't get me wrong, please. Nobody is being cut out of my life or anything along those lines. I have simply come to recognize the fact that I don't have ties on anybody else in this world, and nobody else has ties on me. I am free to move about the craft that we call life.

...& that, my friends, is a beautiful thing. Goodnight.