prayerful of dreams - 2008-06-28
preschool princess - 2008-06-16
life with my sweetheart - 2008-04-29
the fast approach of four - 2008-04-12
lighting up my own life - 2008-03-08

2003-08-13 - 8:33 a.m.

and so today, is my birthday. And the date on the calendar tells me that I am 33 years old, but it feels as uneventful as any other day. So, I try to remember

glimpses of other birthdays.

I am two years old, and wearing wonder bread inspired, bright red and orange polka dot shorts and matching half shirt. It is another unbelievably hot August day, and we are at a Florida zoo. I am clutching my pale blue kiki, also known as, a security blanket, only mine is as beloved as it is ragged and the cheap rayon edging has unraveled and frayed to the point that it is a great embarrassment to my parents. I am toddling around, my round belly tanned and exposed, my white blonde curls tightening in the humid air, my father capturing my every teetering movement on 35 mm film. I am temperamental and prone too tantrums. I am entering the petting zoo. I am being mauled by an aggressive goat, who starts eating my KiKi. I am screaming a shrill soundless scream, caught on 35 mm. I am beseeching and pleading, as the goat casually, and savagely eats my blanket. He chews his way slowly up to the end, as I tug and try to use my two year old solid body mass and pull with all my might. to no avail. I look at my parents to save me, to help rescue my kiki, but they are laughing to hard. I fall to the floor, the kiki rips and comes tearing free, well. a piece of it does. I hold the last remnants of my savagely shredded and mutilated kiki, with heartbroken reverie. I cry for weeks, big fat two year old tears for my kiki. It is my first great sense of loss. I am mournful. I am inconsolable. Happy birthday to me.

I am six years old, and such a beautiful sunlit little girl. I am confident, I am missing two front teeth. I am a daddy's girl, and I believe with great innocence in how pretty and special I am. I am a princess, and the world is my fairy tale. I have a birthday party at Carvel's Ice cream Parlour, in the back room, the low hum of the freezer drowned out by the piercing screams of gleeful six year olds. I invite a handful of friends from school, the room is buttery yellow and plastic, it is 1976. We play pin the tail on the donkey and have a Cinderella ice cream cake. Blue gel icing, and I get to eat the much coveted piece of birthday cake with decorative pink roses made from confection. We don't know anything else but this moment. Life is good. I am happy. I am confident. I am content. Happy Birthday to me.

I am nine, My golden hair has darkened, my teeth are wrapped in braces. I go to the mall and get my hair cut in farrah fawcett style wings. I wear pink Osh Kosh overalls, when not forced into my always untucked catholic school girl uniform. My birthday party is held at Pizza Hut. In between bites of pepperoni pizza we play mad libs and laugh uproariously at using the word booger as both a noun and an adjective. I am entering the fourth grade, I have lots of friends. I am invincible. I am loud. I am outgoing. I am popular. Even though I am emerging from the innocence of childhood, I still cling to a desperate wish to believe in Santa, and think kissing is gross. Happy Birthday to me.

I am thirteen. My body is expanding, I am growing violently out of the little girl that I once was, I am stretched out six feet tall and I am so scared inside. I am losing control of everything. I cry myself to sleep, the night before my thirteenth birthday. The world is spinning to fast, I am dizzy with change. I do not want to be a woman. I do not want to bleed. I do not want to be taller than any other girl in the universe. boys intimidate me, creepy men begin to notice me. I try to close my eyes, but sleep never comes. I spend my birthday with family friends, and blush a crimson red when one present reveals itself to be a sears cotton training bra. I want to disappear. I want to be invisible. I hate myself. I am so ugly. No boy will ever love me. Happy Birthday to me.

I am nineteen. I hide behind layers of giant mall hair. My small eyes are voids of eyelined pain and my cheeks puff out with babyfat. I do not fit in. I am suspended on the sharp edges of who I once was, and who I am becoming. I am in College. I have dreams and secret crushes and tickets to Duran Duran's Comeback tour. I am artsy, and alternative because I am not one of the perfect pretty girls. I like a boy, but have no hope of him ever liking me back. I still think I can be somebody when I grow up. I am angsty. I yearn to travel. Soon I will pack my bags and set sail for London.I am restless with the possibilities of so much greatness. I am going to be a world famous fashion designer. I spend my natal day getting mosquito bites and sunburnt in our pool. No friends. Just family. No cake. memorably mundane. I am nobody. I want to be noticed. Happy birthday to me.

I am 24. I am turning 25. I spend that night drifting off into contented sleep, in the rugged arms of a sullen farm boy. He is incredibly intelligent and strangely angry with the world. He collects knives and inexplicable rage like I collect words. I teach him softness. He was once fired from McDonalds for not smiling. He quotes Nietzsche and I quote Robert Smith. We are polar opposites, and yet our enflamed hearts beat madly the same. Our birthdays are 72 hours apart. I am older. I tell him this means that I am the boss! He lets me think that I am. We are foolishly in love. We are madly in make believe. We talk about getting married. We name the babies and puppy dogs. In the space of our shared birthdays, We barely surface for food. We make love non stop. in the living room, in the Jacuzzi, in the pool, in the kitchen, on the bed, on the floor, in the car, during a torrential rain storm, and outside on the moonlit golf course, beneath the stars, with only an aria of crickets serenading us. I am blissful. I am adrenaline infused. I am invincible. I am 25! Happy Birthday to me.

I am 31. I am BACK in London. I am sitting atop an empty double Decker City bus. It is the stroke of midnight. The perfect night breeze is ruffling my hair, the lights of the city are Tangoing in the reflection of the speeding bus windows. Reds and yellows stretched out in the blur of too much champagne, and I hold out my arms, to embrace the beautiful drunken night. I am happy with an array of cocktails and expensive handbags. My heart is forgotten, the ache drowned with pretty pink drinks and manic shopping trips. I buy a crystal wedding tiara on a whim. I have an array of pashmina's in every colour. I am excessive. and consuming. I am obsessive and self deluding. I am animated. and sometimes witty. I am neurotic and loquacious and by the flickering glow of candlelight, I can almost pass for pretty. I am in love with an elusive ghost of my past. I am me. no apologies. A little bit numb. mostly resigned. Happy birthday to me.

I am 33. I am the arms of a willow tree. Touching the ground of my history. I am self contained. I am insular. I am hidden. I am closed, I am an island not a peninsula. I am forgotten even to myself. Sometimes I discover myself in my sleep, when my arm brushes across the back of my knee. I am startled awake by the memory of touch. I am needy, I am clinging behind a veil of independence. I buy a house and run away. I quit my job. and disappear. I am having a crisis of great magnitude. I fear change and swallow the pain. I spend most days in silence. the tapping of keys. On a keyboard. a Morse code of my internal dialogue. Today is my birthday. I wonder if anybody can even still see me? I search my reflection for a flicker of recognition. trying to catch the sparkle of blushing youth in my unchanged eyes. Today is my birthday. I glimpse the collage of my many faces. I am so many things. but mostly I am so palpably alone. It's just another ordinary day. surrendering to the ordinariness of me. How self consumed can one person be?

Today I am 33.

Happy Birthday to me.

Please make a wish and sign my Guestbook!

My star profile

	Enter your search terms Submit search form
�	Web wendchymes.diarylnd.com

(C) wendchymes 2008

Please make a wish and sign my Guestbook!