Time Machine
Yesterday was my 28th birthday and I did something that I swore I would never do...
I lied about my age.
I did this because I thought it was funny, but when I think about it now, did I really find it funny? Did I just think I thought it was funny? Or was I secretly trying to make myself feel better about turning 28? Maybe a little of both? The good news is that I know I can still pull off early twenties...and probably have some pretty good years left to get away with it (thank you Asian genes!)...and I also recognize how fortunate I am for that.
ID me, bartender! And give me that look you do when you see how old I am. LOVE IT.
But the bad news is that I succumbed to the hype~ that a woman might start to lose "something" as they get older...what that something is, I have no idea. But whatever that something is, we are terrified of losing it and for that reason we can start to see aging to be negative. Even if we are happy with our lives! I think we are mistakenly under the presumption that a degree of our "freshness" and youth and beauty is deteriorating...and granted, our physical appearances do start to deteriorate. But we want to cling to our youths... and as it slips away, we can feel as if we are losing something that actually MATTERS on our journey through life.
I am irritated with myself for letting my guard down and feeling like, even for a moment, aging is something negative...because it's not. I know that. I know that there is so much more beauty in what we gain with every year we are still lucky enough to be alive and breathing.
But I am an American woman and I am not completely immune to the mind fucking that our media subjects us to, despite how hard I try to resist it. Moments of great reflection, as what can come on birthdays, leaves one more vulnerable and prone to blips of weakness. It's all in the mindset, and it's easy to slip.
I've always scoffed at those women who want to fight Father Time by trying to remain "girls" until they just can't pull it off anymore...
Those women who refuse to celebrate another year of their life and instead inject Botox into their faces, stuffing silicone into their chests, sucking fat out of their asses, shopping in the same department as their teenage daughters and spend more time focused on the outside while their insides fall to shit.
Maybe I scoff those women because I used to be in my late teens/early twenties, just like they once were~ with my insane metabolism, chain smoking wrinkle-free and having the energy to drink until the sun came up...when all of the best products and clothes and make-up and bikinis and everything were aimed and catered and created directly at me and my demographic.
Maybe I was just a young woman who didn't know shit about life and what it means to be a woman. Maybe I just like to scoff women whom I believe are acting like idiots. Or maybe I'm just a bitch. I have a feeling it was all of the above.
Part of me scoffs the me from last night who let Ted's believe I was 21. The me of last night who got pleasure from pretending to be someone now 8 years younger than I really am (although another part of me still thinks it is kind of funny...).
I firmly told our scrawny little waiter at Ted's last night when he took my order~ first and foremost~NO birthday singing. No sombrero, no singing, no hoopla. And the mother fucker dragged all the waiters over at the end of our meal to hoopla anyways.
He plopped that ridiculous sombrero on top of the hat I was already wearing and announced to the entire restaurant, "Attention everyone! Today is Meika's birthday!"
"And how old are you today?" he asked me.
"21," I replied dryly. "Whoo hoo! I'm ready to go out to the bar and party!" (When in all reality I was ready to go home, put on my flannel pants and become one with my couch after eating all of that food...).
"Meika is turning 21 today!" And they sang as I turned purple, silently wishing the waiter a nice bump to the funny bone the next time he was carrying a large tray of drinks, and Taylor's family laughed at me and got a big kick out of it.
It wasn't so much my AGE that made me cringe at the hoopla, but more so the public spectacle of it, even though I make no secret of my birthday every year.
I like to think of my birthday as a big deal, to be celebrated by all who know me (and I think the same for all who know me when it is their birthday!), but a whole restaurant full of strangers...what the hell do they care if it's my birthday or not?
I imagined some of the faceless patrons who witnessed my "21st birthday" imagining me going out after my family dinner to get shitfaced at multiple bars with my friends. I imagined them imagining when they crossed that milestone, finally old enough to wreck havoc on the world and drink legally for the first time and how much damn fun it was to be that age...just as I imagine when I witness a 21st birthday as a bystander.
And for the rest of my Ted's dining experience, I happily ate my soapapia in a warped dimension where I got to be 21 again...back when I could eat a ginormous Mexican dinner and still have the energy and room in my system for a night of beer drinking, all without worrying about all of the consumption adding to the junk in my trunk.
