Wish

I am becoming older. There is something about my birthday that distresses me entirely. I re-read an awful poem that I wrote last year when I turned 22 when I think I may have been at my most depressive point. I may post it eventually (for self-deprecating laughs or comparisons), but not today…

Every year people ask me how it feels to be another year older. I've always just given the same response: that I don't feel as though I've changed or grown or improved or even become worse; just maintained an awful sort of status quo (my personal little plateau), and another year of practicing my sarcastic smirk and eye-roll. Last year on my birthday, I read Mad Magazines and took sleeping pills so I could go to sleep at 10pm. I recall feeing very lonely and forgotten. I also recall detesting myself for wallowing in self-pity, as well as hating Hallmark for de-gorifying the human heart. The year before was probably quite similar. I don't remember, but I do know the last time I actually celebrated was the year I turned 12.

I had invited the girls from my 6^th grade class, half of whom irritated me. I had felt compelled to invite them all for fear of social isolation, or more than I was accustomed to, in any case (if I was friends with one girl, I had to invite all her friends too since they come in sets at that age…and every age, I guess). My father had made grocery store pepperoni pizza and zucchini-raisin cake shaped like a lumpy heart, drippy with white icing. We went ice skating in Austin near the depanneur and then came home to play hide-and-seek in the snow. It's hard to believe that this was over a decade ago.

I guess a lot has happened in the last 11 years, but then I guess a lot happens all the time that no one's really aware of. Through the years, I've let friends grow distant, considered the choices of my peers, and worried incessantly. People have died, moved away, or have simply faded from my thoughts, as I'm sure I have in the minds of others. I've watched people age and grow bitter, choosing to stay alive simply because they already exist. I guess it's much easier to observe changes in others than it is in oneself. But then, I suppose writing this may all just be a sort of guessing-game, filling in the blanks with scraps of memory.

I don't feel like an adult, though I don't feel particularly childish either. I can't remember ever feeling typically that way, like the quintessential 'carefree kid,' that is. I mostly remember being upset, angry or bored.

The young 'me' spent a lot of time reading in her room, or drawing. She climbed trees because she knew no one else in her family was able to venture after her, unlike the refuge of her closet-sized bedroom, which had a very breakable hook-lock. Paradoxically, she thrived on attention, living up to the expectations of her siblings by exploding in furious rages and generally being as different as she could manage, which meant drinking grape juice with a tea-spoon, shrieking upon passing under dark tunnels on the auto-route (she knew it to be highly annoying, but thought it to be endearingly so), and nibbling Twix bars sideways, like she was playing a chocolate harmonica.

She liked tight spaces and under the stairs she'd set up a sort of cave, dragging her pancake-flat pillows and gilt-covered tulip lamp with her.

She excelled at hide-and-seek (who knew her talent for disappearing would prove ever so useful to her later in life!) with the unique ability to cram her body into laundry hampers full of dirty clothes, or the upper shelves of closets.

She loved Garfield, but grew out of him years before she'd ever admit it. Her obsession with the comic had defined her for too long to drop it, and she was afraid no one would know anything about her.

Her mother called her a "hoarder." She saved everything and had hundreds of collections ranging from unicorn ornaments to postcards to horror stories. She knew they'd come in handy someday.

She resented being patronized, treated like a child, that is, and was all too aware that she was in the middle, not only of her two siblings, but of a lot of complicated shit, as well. At night, as her parents watched TV, the only thing separating her from them was a thin wall her father had built when he'd decided to give them each their own room: 3 tiny cubby-holes in a row, flanked by a narrow hallway with a blue-grey carpet. She rarely went fell asleep before midnight, reading to pass the time. Sometimes her mother would let her stay up an extra hour or so provided she agreed to hide behind the piss-green armchair should her brother get up suspecting something to be amiss.

The "Lily" I was, was sick often and every morning she would wake up drenched by the moisture from the black and grey humidifier she'd used since she was six and had to have her tonsils and adenoids removed in one shot. She was always pale and un-athletic and prone to sinus infections. Her favourite medicine was a banana flavoured syrup and she was depressed when she got big enough for the doctor to give her pills to swallow instead.

Her mother tried to get her to exercise, so she rode her bike on gravel-covered dirt roads covered with pot-holes. She was slow, and like everything else in life, she considered the bike-ride a competition. She rarely finished and would often stop half-way and sit on the side of the road waiting for her siblings and mother to turn around. She felt highly inadequate and hated herself for it. Back then, she was often frustrated or scared or angry. She cried often, but looked upon her tears as proof of her malleability. They were odious to her, but thinking about them usually made her weep more.

Though she would have denied it, this girl was ever hopeful and in the course of her childhood had made innumerable wishes. Her mother had taught her to find the North -star on clear nights and how to recite "Star-light, Star-bright," but as a young sceptic, this girl preferred sparklers from the corner store, or those neon flashlights made to look like lighters. Nevertheless, she put star-shaped glow-in-the-dark stickers on her ceiling just in case.

She wished for all the usual things, like being the smartest girl in the world or having millions of dollars, because that's what everyone else seemed to want. In any case, these were the desires she'd admit to when her mother asked her what she'd come up with, or what she was thinking about, because secretly she didn't care or expect them to come true. Though she wasn't superstitious, she kept her own true wants to herself, hoping her silence about them would make these desires especially valid.

In bed at night, when she was really desperate, she would beg a God she never quite believed existed, but only as a last resort; she was not above resorting to passive-blackmail, promising to 'believe' if only one wish would come true…One night, God was the crack in her ceiling, the one between the two large glow-in-the-dark stickers she'd gotten on a school field-trip to a science museum. And, as she tried to sleep, listening to the humidifier drone, her head buried suffocatingly beneath her pillow, she imagined it mocked her like the smirk it resembled. Once, her brother killed a spider for her on it with his slipper, and its blood-stain changed the way it looked forever.

Later, God was the giant moth keeping her up, flapping its heavy wings against the window pane at night, more of a nuisance than anything. But eventually, as she became more aware of the fantastic and wholly unrealistic nature of wish-fulfilment, the notion of "God" entered her mental lexicon of imaginary bonfire creatures, falling well after "Bakkru" and a bit before "Juumbi."

As the years passed, parts of some of my wishes have been granted, but they've had nothing to do with any God or monster. Just me. And I'm not as terrible or frightening or wise as either. Sometimes I wish I'd never made these wishes at all, because now there is nothing left to feel about them but exhaustion and ultimately regret.

It's sometimes easier to imagine younger incarnations of myself as various different people. It makes assigning blame a much easier endeavour, especially when the burden is measured out in small doses. Every me gets a piece of this bitter dessert.

So, every year on my birthday, when people ask me how it feels to be another year older, I tell them it doesn't feel like anything, no noticeable change. But, every year I've been different because for every year I've aged, in my mind, the gift I give myself becomes heavier, and it makes my shoulders ache and my head drop a little lower.

For the first time in over a decade, I will have a 'good' birthday this year with many nice diversions. I am commemorating the end of my 22^nd year and the beginning of my 23^rd on the other side of the world in Seoul, South Korea. I will be distracted and I won't be alone. On Wednesday, my coworkers will probably sing me a really butchered version (in English) of "Happy Birthday," as they have for everyone else (who've coincidentally all already had birthdays since I've been here) over a sugary cake that they'll carefully watch to see if I manage to choke down. I'll have to show my teeth and look all appreciative. I really hope they don't acknowledge it though, as it may just be the longest, most uncomfortable 15 consecutive minutes we spend in each other's company since I've been here.

Anyway, hopefully all my friends at home have a "super" (yes, this is sarcasm) Valentine's Day (or VD, as I prefer to call it) and are spending it with someone nice (or willing). Don't let the greeting card companies get you down…