Birthday Post

Reflections on how a life lingers and impressions we make and leave around us.

I had written about some experiences a few weeks ago that I thought I’d write about now, on my birthday, and they no longer feel like the thoughts I want to carry on or share. It’s incredible to think about, all of the experiences, thoughts, feelings, interactions, etc we’ve had that we likely don’t recall here and now, and probably won’t ever consider again in our lifetime. How much impact these moments have, how is that measured? Is it more if you write it down? Is it more if it reoccurres on your mind on a loop or in specific situations? How to do you measure the impact of a person, a place, a day in a park, a conversation in 2009 about a thing that never even came to fruition? What is a life? 🙃 No, that’s not what I’m getting at.

I’ve been writing in journals off and on since I was 6, I bought a pink journal with kittens on it at a school sale and said I’d give it to my stepbrother as a present. My mom suggested I keep it for myself. Or that’s at least what my vague memories, and probably my mom, tell me what happened. And from there I’ve been recording a version of my existence through the lens of whatever seemed to matter most in that time and place.

A few months ago I decided to read through a particularly hard time of my life, or so I believe, 22–24, 2008–2011, a period that in retrospect I recall a lot of partying, relationship frustration, wonderful friends, heavy drinking, existential frustration, feeling left behind because I hadn’t graduated college when “I was supposed to” in 2008, and hating that I still worked in a restaurant. But the journal reflected so much more joy than I recall. I didn’t write much about being depressed. I think there was more to that time than I allow the record to show for.

I’ve experienced a lot of changes in the past few months, graduating from grad school, a breakup and managing heartbreak, getting involved in orgs & volunteering, job hunting, reading, exploring, quietly contemplating potential outcomes, feeling so so so many intense feelings. I’ve cried more over the past month than I have in a very long time, for many reasons, but I’ve also felt incredibly sure of the choices I’ve made and what I’m starting to build in tiny and medium sized ways. Also not just sad tears, a long list of feelings attached to the tears that poured out of me.

Still trying to figure out my life in Los Angeles, three years in and post covid I don’t quite yet have my finger on the pulse of what my life should or could look like. I’ve written about the experiences every day in my journal app, far different from the pink journal with kittens, but I’ve consistently “written” in it for 444 days (didn’t pick that number to be clever, today is literally day 444) and many days before that in less consistent bursts since October of 2019. If my digital record were found, read, rediscovered years from now, what aspects of my life would I still embody, recall, have been shaped by? Inevitably all of it, or no? How are you not shaped by what you experience? Is it worth exploring that some things may not impact you, perhaps not deeply, for better or worse, and that you don’t get to choose what those things are?

My mom and I recently had an argument and didn’t speak for about a month, my decision. The first conversation we had after that break we ended up talking about family history, lamenting the fact that we don’t know much about our lineage before her parents’ parents. Let alone several generations back or before my Grandmother’s family came to the United States, or my Grandfather, whose family line has likely been here much longer. But in that conversation she also relayed to me many stories and things she knows about her (our) family and I was struck at how remarkable her memory was, even if it wasn’t perfect or exactly as it happened, it was beautiful and intricate and held so much. I was in awe of all that she holds.

In a text recently she said to me “I saw kids playing soccer at Westford Elementary and thought of how much you really didn’t want to go when I first brought you.” (Fifth grade, 1996). And when I tell you, that text floored me. Why? Because again, I was in awe of how much my mother holds, one of those “ya duh” moments of realizing how much she has witnessed of my life, and how much of my existence she carries within her, a perspective and memories and line of life of and about myself that I will never truly know. As we all carry of the people around us through our lives. She’s obviously known me longer than anyone, but to think of her and anyone who has that longevity of knowledge of a person within them, it makes me cry every time I think about it, how beautiful that is.

The things that hold our lives, our journals, our minds, our people, our computers and phones with thousands of photos we will probably never go through before we die, our places that hold fleeting and concrete imprints of our selves as we pass by leaving a shadow of a glance or a deep deep impression,

These things all matter, for a millisecond or a lifetime and I’ll never be able to quantify what it means but I am forever grateful for it all.