the birthday fiasco

"death is the only adventure you have left"

-captain james s. hook

i've been thinking a lot about peter pan lately. sometimes i feel like one of the lost boys that doesn't want to grow up.

i think this weekend forced me to begin the journey out of neverland.

ever since i've been little my mom has always made holidays special. no matter which one it is we always end up getting a little something. i think she may be one of the few women out there that can make a big deal out of st. patricks day, halloween or thanksgiving. (is it normal to get presents on those days? i'm still not sure) so this year when i found out that 5 of my closest friends had birthdays in the same week i was really excited! it was like a whole week of celebration and i was happy to help plan it all...i had almost even forgotten my own birthday was approaching.

the week was rolling along fine until i got to one of my best friend's birthdays. i guess you could say that he hadn't had too many memorable birthdays in the past and i wanted this one to be at least a little fun. well, it didn't turn out exactly as planned but that's just how things go, right?

this is the first year that i really didn't get to celebrate my birthday the way i wanted to on my actual birth date. not only that, but it felt as if i had way too many groups of people to celebrate it with. in the end, i felt too stressed and too responsible to even celebrate. i just wanted to crawl into bed and wait for it to all end.

sometimes life doesn't go as we'd exactly like it to. sometimes we have to grow up and actually work on our birthdays (this is still shocking to me). i suppose in the end, i'm not really ready to be a grown up. i just wanna be a toys-r-us kid.

i think that layered on top of all my selfishness is the realization that i'm getting older. now...hear me out those of you that are laughing at my complete naiveness. i have so many friends getting married this summer or graduating. some are even having kids or getting divorces whereas i'm still feeling like a 10 year old girl. when did everyone else my age decide it was time to grow up and why didn't i get that memo?

in the end, i don't want to be old. i don't want all of these grown up responsibilities. i look forward to the possibilites but yet i'm still running. i'm caught in that 'in-between place' of not being a complete adult nor a complete child. i'm a young adult (with a large emphasis on the young).

i suppose there's a compromise that i'll discover, and hopefully i'm ready for it.

"oh, no. to live... to live would be an awfully big adventure"

- peter pan