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Goodbye 25

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Today was my last day of being 25, and so I decided to make a conscious effort to try and remember it. I never really remember how it felt to have been any other age than the age I am now. What was it like being 19? 22? 24? I don’t remember. Could it be possible that I just felt the same the entire time? I do remember dreading getting older each year. And each year everyone I know mutters, “I’m so old” whenever it is their turn to blow out the candles. So today I tried to feel young because we are just getting older, and if we can’t feel young now, then one day we will look back and it will be too late.

Anyway, so there I was today, ordering bacon on my salad, sitting in the sun, eating black and white cookies and trying to relish this final day of exactly a quarter century’s worth of life. Except when I look back 30 years from now, I don’t think I’ll remember that I had the poppy seed dressing, that my aunt chided me for ordering bacon on my salad and that a day before turning 26, I was desperately trying to preserve the feeling of being 25 in my mind. No, what I’ll remember is the hospital visits, the crying, the frustration and now, the panic attacks.

These past few days Alan has been having such severe panic attacks that I had to drive him to the ER last night. Since he wasn’t running a fever, we were forced to wait with everyone else in the dingy waiting room. I felt exhausted and tried closing my eyes to get some rest. If I just let my mind go, I could almost pretend the sound of the girl sitting next to me vomiting into a small kidney shaped vomit-holder was a babbling brook.

When Alan was finally called back, I waited with him in the room. I thought saying soothing things might help and so I talked about mushrooms, forests, pizza and The Best Thing I Ever Ate on the Food Network, all while the lady down the hall from us screamed bloody murder as though she were about to be dipped into a vat of acid. She didn’t have any legs or arms. She had one hook and this made Alan feel a bit better. Perhaps his situation wasn’t so dire after all.

This was year 25 and I’m not sure if I want to embrace it and linger in it like a chocolate bath or rip it out of my memory completely. When we got home, Anthropologie seemed to have sensed my dilemma. They sent me the cutest pre-birthday note I have ever received from a customer loyalty card (or whatever they consider their “Anthro” card to be). Good thinking Anthropologie, maybe I can just go shop my troubles away.

This otherwise seemingly useless card gets you a beautifully presented birthday note.

It would have been awesome if the inside continued with …brina, but no suck luck.

I’ve decided. I’m sewing all these buttons onto the shirt I’m wearing tomorrow.

Last modified: January 10, 2019