birthday rambles

20 was my year of mountains and i would not have it any other way.

i am a different person than i was 365 days ago. zora neal hurston says that there are years that ask questions, and there are years that answer. i am in the asking. in that asking, i am different.

and the thing about life is that it is both lived and understood in cycles. it cycles through and it keeps cycling through. i hesitate to solidify things into words—words that will not be swept into the wind or forgotten as they pass between lips, but instead will be given weight and connotations the second they are transferred outside of myself and into the solid, recorded. i’ve been thinking about the idea of sharing, over-sharing, and the ways in which we steward that which is sacred, personal, and revealing. it freaks me out that i have an entire (multiple, even ugh) corner of the world wide web to shout my thoughts and opinions and life out into the unknown. it freaks me out that i have a platform to write like eight freaking paragraphs about my birthday and that people will even care to read them (?!?!). to be frank, it freaks me the hell out just how much has been divided and spilled over various platforms the past few years–is this desensitization? is this self-focused? is this taking away from the sacredness of actual connection? i started blogging six years ago—which means that, much of my more formative and changing years have been recorded and “seen” by god knows who. many days, i feel that i have outgrown this particular medium of sharing. we’ll see. for the sake of birthdays, for the sake of my favorite month, and for the sake of being hella dramatic, however, i am sharing. i take comfort in knowing that those closest to me have shared (not read) both our shitty and celebrating moments. they are pillars and i carry that with me.

i view myself in layers; i view myself as a circle forever in motion; and i view myself as a swinging pendulum. from the second i turned twenty, i felt in my gut that i was on the cliff of a very big journey.  (i’m the first to call myself dramatic—a quality that has been prevalent this year). a continuous theme was that of embracing myself—a year of taking up space, of being loud, and being aggressively myself. i was finding a home in my chest and i was learning to recognize the sound of my own voice.

i read dozens of books and wrote more than i ever have. a large portion of my dear friends are new, and i get to live with eight of them in a house that never lacks loud personality, song, sarcasm, or story. i started painting again and i got to taste the air of 3 countries that are not my home. most significantly, i did not want to be afraid to let things shatter me. i didn’t want to have fear drive my life, and so i did my best to crack myself open to the human experience. i wanted myself to be shattered by people and the world and art and real shit. and it feels like i was.

i learned the most when i allowed my skin to be covered in dusty dirt or i screamed into the open canyon, or i had an anxiety attack in the middle of a bathroom in a hostel in paris. i learned the most when i watched sunlight speckles dance on the inside of my wrists or when i breathed in cities and exhaled uncertainties. i learned most when i found God in gospel, in museums, in books, in pain–and she looked different than i expected. i learned most when i sat on roofs and in cars and in professors’ offices and on planes and in bars and looked at human eyeballs and listened to real words, pieces of real stories, spoken by real, beating, breathing human beings. i learned most by sitting down and shutting up. i learned most by allowing myself to be cracked open by cracked voices and careful confessions. i learned the most by hearing my own voice and allowing it to live both inside and outside my chest. there were times where i was shocked that i had never read the poems of my heart until she wrote about hers and spoke them into a room that felt like the universe. human connection is irrefutable.

i cannot lie—the presence of growing pains has been hella strong. i listened to my bones and i let chaos consume me and i am changed because of it. (a very relevant picture i have painted of myself to people would be that of a shaky, wild child in a glassware shop. i needed to learn to walk, but i was shaking and breaking everything around me). i let myself be called an artist and i let my inner-child be my compass. i went through months of seeing mundane things that brought me to tears. i lost sleep because words from my books or discussions in class were forever stuck in my head. i went through months of apathy and months of carrying anger with no idea what to do with it. i carried months of joy where i couldn’t keep the laughs from pouring out of my throat. never ending paradoxes.

i was loud this year. i was dramatic, angry, and unreasonable often. i was aggressive and took up space and spent a lot of time trying to do my own damn thing. i am beyond grateful that i have people in my life that have given me space to rant, to forget to do my dishes, to leave art supplies and books all over the porch. i have received grace for being a shitty friend/roommate, for being the worst text-responder ever. i have been given room to be angry, to question, to be spontaneous, to be loud, and to make people dance with me at all times of the day. i would not survive anything without the people in my life—-they have been the pillars of this year. i have learned more than i ever, ever have. i unlearned even more. again, life is cycling through and i feel, again, to be changing. the next year is super uncertain and terrifies me in a lot of ways. but i am surrounded by the best, most profound, silly, educated, loving, listening humans that i’ve ever known. people are forever what matters the most. i am receiving an education that is constantly challenging and forming me, and i get to run a business that allows me to enter into sacred moments and pursue creativity. i am familiar with a God who is both present and kind. my life is filled with love and there is nothing more i could ever, ever want.

21!!!!!!!! #cakecakecakecake

ALSO HBD TO MY GIRL AMELIA EARHART I’M HONORED TO SHARE YOUR DAY

“the more one does and sees and feels, the more one is able to do, the more genuine may be one’s appreciation of fundamental things like home, and love, and understanding companionship”
-amelia earhart