33.

Today is my birthday. I’m 33. The year of flowers while we’re here. Each moment is not given, and yet we, each of us, find a way from one to the next, not all of us, and that’s what makes all of this precious and undoubtedly short, measured in the ways we see fit. I’ve written letters in my 32nd year here, and many of them included instructions to listen to Ross Gay’s Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude. That’s a concept that, of course, and for good reason, turns people away. How can we be grateful during a time like this? How flowers? During times like these? How joy? If I’ve learned anything in the last year, it’s reconciling seemingly contradictory things. Perhaps there’s a thousand ways to live a life. Mine is one of them.

Last year, I was reminded by a friend to be careful of the stories we tell about ourselves. We might end up believing them, true or not, and what a tragedy that could be, finding ourselves in the midst of stories that make it harder to see the heart of things. Having a capacity to see in the dark makes way for shifting light, both a necessary part of this life. It was a student who quietly proclaimed in the early hours of a spring morning half a decade ago: if we can just understand that suffering comes with loving, that the two are inseparable even when the seams look breakable, that to love deeply is to understand that which will not be forever, and most of us will have to bear the brunt of what comes next. In the thick of my 30s, I am learning we will both expectedly and suddenly lose people, at times succumbing to distance and at times death, and to choose this life, all of its wonders and all of its unanswered questions, that is the most noble thing. What a gift it is to love people and be loved by people. There are days when I can’t see either path. Days I trip over myself, changing my mind in the middle of changing my mind. “Tomorrow will be new,” I whisper, arm outstretched tracing ‘I love you’ for anyone who will watch. Listen. This moment, it clicks into place. Language shapes narrative. Droughts to downpours, keep moving.

To poetry every day. To flowers while we’re here. To honoring each other just because. To 33, 34, onward.