Age is Just a Number

"You look happy " he said as he spun me around to the music and lyrics of Garth Brooks.

"In fact, I've never seen you look this happy" he continued when he caught me on the spin back.

"Really?" I questioned as we attempted to join the crowd of line dancers starting the electric slide. Soon after as we were doing the grapevine, the music swallowed us and the conversation died, but the words stayed with me.

As I boarded my flight last Thursday, menacing clouds threatened to drown Seattle alive and not even my new purple wool scarf could keep me at an adequately warm temperature. A four hour plane ride with a brief (but far too long) stop in Oakland, two diet cokes, and three bags of salted peanuts later, I arrived in paradise.

As we began our descent into San Diego on the day of my 23rd birthday and the year anniversary of my college graduation weekend, I couldn't help but smile at the familiarity of the scenery and the comfort of the ocean breeze. My smile was genuine, it was ear to ear, and as a result, I'm pretty sure the guy sitting next to me on Southwest Flight 508 now thinks I have a severe personality disorder. Considering twenty minutes earlier, I was flooding row 13 with tears while writing graduation cards and words of wisdom to some of my closest friends who were about to close the chapters of their lives living by the sea, just as I did twelve months ago.

A few short minutes later, I found myself back at Mission Beach where I spent the best four years of my life thus far. With a beer in hand, I reminisced about my glory days and brainstormed ways to relive them during the four short days of my vacation.

Later that night while celebrating (slash denying the fact that I have entered my mid-mid-twenties) with close friends at a beach house, I found myself ranting and raving about all the problems with getting older.

"My eyes are getting worse, I have a bunion on my left foot, and I'm pretty sure I found three new grey hairs this morning alone" I complained to anyone who would listen. "This growing old thing has got to go. I would give anything to be back in college, about to graduate and only 22 years old. 23 just sounds so washed up and unimportant" I stated.

And as the conversation then turned to what lies ahead for all of us, the marriages, the houses, the children, the ownership of any new car besides a mini-van, I began to reveal some of my deepest darkest secrets regarding my thoughts on getting older. I opened my mouth after one too many gin and root beers (my new preferred drink of choice) and confessed some of the things that I personally am actually looking forward to most in old age. Including, but not limited to, purchasing a bedazzler at age thirty so I can begin to bedazzle every article of clothing with the hopes that by the time I am 55, I will only wear things that sparkle. "I just want to be the gaudiest" I said. "Gaudy and sparkly. Because when you're old, you just can".

The next morning after biting my tongue and sharing a few good laughs about the previous night over breakfast at my favorite cafe on the beach, I got to thinking. I thought about how 23 years of my life have come and gone, I thought about how fast it went and how much i've changed, even in the last year. And as I watched my friends getting ready for their graduation party later that day, stressing about their outfits, the party plans, the food, and whether or not people would show up, I couldn't help but laugh, realizing that a year ago I was in their exact same place. Stressing about the things that seemed so important at the time.

Now-a- days, the things I stress about include, being prepared for a meeting at work, paying the rent on time, and finding a boyfriend so my Grandmother will quit harassing me about being single on the daily. And for the first time since I myself graduated, I looked at my beautiful friends, so excited and so naive, ready to enter the real world but so scared to leave the comfort of college, and I was thankful that I was not in their place. Thankful that my year of transition has passed. My first rejection after a real-time job interview has come and gone, my true friendships from college have been solidified by the passing of time, and I have begun to call my new city home, taking comfort in it's simplicity and at times, even in the rain.

As the weekend continued on with great fanfare, minor sunburns, too many tequila shots, and the best Mexican food i've had since I left San Diego a year ago, I found peace in knowing that though my days on the beach are gone, my glory days are not necessarily over.

"I've never seen you this happy" said my guy friend from college as we danced around our favorite college bar, reminiscing and reliving our glory days. And in that moment I realized, I really don't know if I have ever been this happy, this sure of myself, this excited about what is to come. And those words, his words, stayed with me.

On the flight home, scrunched in a middle seat, and in between some short but much needed naps, I realized that though I may have to get my contact prescription strengthened, and though my days of running around carefree on the beach are over, I still have great things ahead of me. When the plane touched down at SeaTac airport on Monday, I thought to myself, 23 is a pretty okay number, not too young, not too old, but definitely a good number, a happy number. And if anything, it is at least, one step closer to my sparkly clothing days, and that my friends, is something to look forward to.