23

The day before yesterday was my birthday. I would have posted sooner, but I fell asleep after I typed the previous sentence, then started dealing with my current personal crisis, which I’ll talk about at the end-ish of this post.

My family and I had dinner the Saturday before my birthday, so I was able to spend my birthday with Pepito; we had lunch at Italianni’s (something that we will only do on special occasions because we are poor frugal) then decided to work at a cafe: he on his thesis, me on some backlogged articles. We went home after spending some time together, then enjoyed the carrot cake that Gela had baked with her boyfriend Convi.

Now I’m 23, and I’m feeling insecure about my life, as if I was lost. It feels like such a strange thing, as technically, since I don’t have a job, I’m ‘free’, yet I feel the pressure to get a job, not just from my parents but from myself as well. I don’t exactly have an extravagant lifestyle, but it still costs money to keep doing what I want. I want to be able to support it myself. It’s slightly amusing because I feel like a starving artist, when I’m not even much of an artist nor a graduate of an art course. I suppose I feel that way because recently I’ve been able to go back to my creative roots: writing, painting, paper cutting, creating and tinkering with things, and I’ve started considering these things as possible sources of income. It’s also so weird for me because it feels as if suddenly, there are a lot of options to pursue. After so many years in an academic institution (6, if you wish to know exactly how long) I’ve gotten used to being on more or less a straight path. To be fair, I appreciated that guide, though I guess it’s because I I found my course to be pretty concise.

But now, I’ve been out of college for 6 months and I’m feeling a bit lost. I was prepared to transition from college life to yuppie life, but I didn’t anticipate getting stuck in the transition itself. It’s frustrating, since I’ve given myself goals and expectations like, I’d get a job, I’d be earning my own money, I’d support myself (while admittedly still mooching off my parents but you know, paying for my own things) and I’d really be independent; not just I’m-alone-independent but I’m-taking-care-of-myself-independent.

I understand though that there are two ways to look at this; as either a setback or an opportunity. So far I’ve been seeing it as an opportunity; a chance to do stuff I like doing or haven’t had the chance to do, which I have been doing, but really, I need to start earning soon. I can’t help but feel like I’m idle, even though I’ve been up to my own things, and that feeling is starting to really bother me.

on birthdays (2)

(I fell asleep while typing this up, so I’m posting this a day late.)

 

Today is Pepito’s birthday. I actually sat with him for an hour after midnight before realizing it, which is sad considering I spent the past 10 days posting a countdown on his Facebook wall to his birthday. We went out for ‘lunch’, which was more like merienda since we went out at 2pm, to Yakimix which turned into Burgoo, though we ate much more than a merienda sized meal. It was fun and I enjoyed myself, I felt comfortable around his family and I was just myself and it was great.

The whole experience was a nice change. With my past boyfriends I’ve always felt nervous around their families/parents, or never really ‘met’ their parents, so today actually felt good. It didn’t come at a complete surprise though, since Pepito and I talk about our families often and we’ve more or less concluded that our parents are very similar, but still, it was nice to just be there, be comfortable and be honest about myself. I guess I’ve always felt a need to validate myself to , as if to say ‘Hey, I’m good enough for your son‘ which is silly and stupid, I know; I don’t feel that way anymore, since past experiences have taught me to value myself more, though the idea of putting my best foot forward is still there.

The day in itself was very simple, and though everything wasn’t perfect, I hope Pepito enjoyed as I did.

on birthdays

This year, I’ve been terrible at remembering birthdays. I feel pretty embarrassed to say that I’ve been relying on Facebook to tell me of upcoming birthdays, and when I started to stop going to Facebook regularly, I began to completely forget. As such, I haven’t gotten gifts for any of my friends for their birthdays (which I plan to make up for this Christmas, I promise). My own birthday was a strange thing, since my family wasn’t here to celebrate it with me, and it was shrouded with a few complications (let’s just leave it at that).

A few minutes ago, I happened to log onto my Facebook account, where I found out that yesterday was the birthday of a close friend of mine who had died last year. For me, it’s usually alright to greet a person late on their birthday. I mean, I’m not exactly that punctual when it comes to remembering. But when I saw that it was his birthday yesterday and went over the greetings he had received on his wall, I felt strange. I didn’t want to greet him. I didn’t want to post on his wall. And I felt bad for it. How do you greet someone who isn’t here anymore? How do I say Happy Birthday, Gab without feeling silly or pretentious or bad for knowing that I’m just saying it aloud mostly for myself?

But I really do mean it. It just feels strange because I’m saying it to myself when I know I should be  saying it directly to you.