Birthday

Today, I am 23.

I guess nothing really happens at 23, but it feels important to me.  23 is a very adult age.  It's no longer a (typical) college-age. Most 23 year olds have jobs.  It's not a weird age to get married, or have children. It's also not a weird age to...not get married and not have children. To enjoy one's independence, be a workaholic during the week, and party on the weekend, and possibly date.  23 is a fun age, but also an age where you feel you should know what you want.  You are working on the rest of your life now; not on experimenting or preparing...it's now. It's happening. You need to be working for it.  You and no one else. It's a lot terrifying, and also a bit empowering.

I wake up this birthday in the exact same location as I did a year ago, which is a rather unusual situation, after college. And yet I enter this year very different than I entered the last year.

This year, unlike last, I didn't gain independence, but I gained confidence in that independence.  Being on my own and taking care of myself is no longer new to me; it's a given.  Last year, going back to the parents would have been embarrassing, but tolerable...now, circumstances would need to be quite severe to warrant living at home again.  I didn't really gain new experience in this field, but I've gained distance, perspective, self-assurance.  I'm in a good place.

This year, I lost something...and gained something.  I can't say I have a new special person in my life, nor that an existing person became more special, since I felt he already was.  But I got something I really wanted for a very long time, and it's a wonderful, wonderful feeling.  Over the past years, I have learned a fair bit about love through this person, and looking back, I can put it into words.  I can understand why my mom insisted that unrequited love was crucial to emotional development. Perhaps I'm wrong in the conclusions I drew, and I will learn with time. For now, I believe I have learned that true love (the good, pure love we all seek) is non-possessive.  To explain this would take longer than I wish to commit here; if you want, we can talk about it.  Let me just finish for now with: love is a great feeling. Requited love is a fantastic, mind-blowing feeling.  And I'm really glad I got to have that experience, again.

This year, I got another kind of love, too.  Beautiful, unconditional love from one's own blood.  I got to see family I hadn't seen in 10 years.  And 16 years. And never (because Ivan is 12).  I got to stand on 'my' soil once more.  I quote because...because some of the time on 'my' soil, I felt very much the stranger, the outcast, even a foreigner.  Nonetheless...seeing places I had stepped as a very, very young child, remembering things I should have forgotten, laughing and crying with people I was inexplicably close to after only a few days (that I remember) in their company...and putting flowers on graves.  My trip to Russia was, overall, bittersweet. Not that anything bad happened; just sadness at having missed events and people, also at realizing that my life was not there no matter how hard I tried or how often I visited...That an entire branch of my family was now no longer fated (I think) to continue on Russian soil.  More sadly, that everything my grandparents and great grandparents had worked their butts off for, to pass off to their children, was impossible to pass to us.  Or even if it was, that it would fall into disrepair and ruin...And my children won't have the ancient family dacha they could have (in a very different life) had, full of relics of the Soviet 1960s, their test pilot great-great-grandfather, etc. One which I, if ever so briefly, got to experience. I am lucky in that.

Speaking of family, this year, mine moved away.  Farther away than I can go visit for a weekend.  Far enough that I will probably not see them more than once a year...though maybe twice, if I'm lucky.  It's strange and sometimes unsettling, but I can laugh about the fact that as usual, my parents had to reverse 'the way of things' and move away from their kid instead of the other way around.  I applied to graduate schools everywhere; it was convenient having my family three hours away, but something I was willing to forgo for my education. And now, I have to. It's not surprising. Again, bittersweet.  Bitter to be far from people I care about, sweet to know I can handle it, and again bitter to realize how little it affected me, how easily I made that transition.

Which brings us back to...growing up. Growing older. Growing wiser. It's all happening.  Sometimes, it puts a spring in my step. Other times, it makes me want to curl up in a ball in bed and never climb out.  I guess that's life, overall. I had a tumultuous year. Other interesting things happened...I made some new friends. I opened a savings account. I found out my credit score. I got an office with a window. I got drunk; like, really drunk.  I sent a package through international mail.  I got a television. I made borscht.  A lot of milestones.  I'm sure I have a lot left to go, though.

This year, I hope I can buckle down and find the balance and maturity I've sought for many years now (I know, how likely is that? But a girl can hope.)  Somehow, I feel like this year, for me, has been the growing experience most people have when they start college.  I let go of some of my previous convictions and tried new things, and they worked out pretty well, overall.  However, it's time to remember that I'm here for a reason, and I'm working for something.  That I'm trying to get results, to draw conclusions, to become a scholar.  A creator, distributor, and trader of knowledge.  An expert.  I don't know what this says about me...but no matter how down I was when I went back to that decision, I always had to confirm that, yes, I do believe I have it in me to be all these things.  That's something.  So, here's to 23.  Here's to trying earnestly with every fiber of my being to be healthy, happy, and also accomplished for another year!