Oct. 4th (or, Turning Darkness into Light)

On this day, 27 years ago
I was born.

I was born 5 weeks too early to a 27 year old woman.
Ever since I've been trying to figure out the balance.

I was born a Libra, but I should have been a Scorpio, and it shows. I vacillate. My mood will bottom out, I'll tumble down. I pick up, and I skyrocket. I can find balance, but I'm constantly teetering.

Twenty six was a big year for teetering. Whereas at twenty five I was very (overly) focused on self actualizing (move out of the city! Plan a wedding! Go to graduate school! Start planning for the future! It has pensions!) 

I succeeded at one of those things. I did more teetering than anything else.

I teetered a lot on who I am, and what that means. How do I define myself? Where does my skin end and the outside world begin? Have you ever watched the light dance just above your skin in the morning? Am I the light? Is the light here because I see it?

 I gained many friendships and perspectives out of my 26th winter. I started to realize some things that initially worried me about myself. I'm not as ready to settle as I thought. I have so much wandering still in my soul. I think I always will. I'll always need that little vardo in my mind. I'll always need to wonder, I'll always need to spend a month drinking whiskey on a fire escape unable to name the feeling inside me. 

I feel that this past year, I've gotten to know and love some people I've always known and loved, in the most "woo-woo" sense of the phrase. I will not deny the spooky thoughts, the fatalist in me who believes in cycles. I felt it when I visited Ireland with my father, re-creating a trip he had done with my mother while she was pregnant with me (27 years ago, now). And isn't life beautiful, and strange?

I suppose it all comes back to that "Am I an adult now?" thing. I want, so badly, for there just to be a switch. A switch that makes me whole, or something. It's the "adult switch". It's when I'm satisfied, when I have the answers (I don't even fully understand the questions). It's where I'm the rock, and not the sea beating against it. I want there to be a switch that takes me out of the dark.

I am starting to let go of that idea. That I'll ever be an "adult" per se. I can, more importantly, be a person. I can be humane. I can be understanding. I can be forgiving. I am a masterpiece of stardust. I am a beautiful, natural machine. I am the sum of my experience. I am terror, I am grace. And so are you. 

Happy birthday to me, and to you. Because we all have one day, when we became little lights where there used to be dark. 

<3