My birthday is New Year’s Eve. It’s a real showstopper of a day, but often overshadowed by the holidays. Sometime around age 14 or 15 I insisted on switching to celebrating my half-birthday (June 301) instead. My family had a half-hearted celebration, not quite believing I really meant it. And then of course, as that year passed and December arrived, I realized I couldn’t not celebrate my true birthday. To the irritation of my siblings, my birthday was back on. To this day, my dad, who got a kick out of the silliness of the episode, still sends me a half-birthday gift in the mail.
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This year I have dressed intentionally sillier than ever before. Part of it is because I work at an elementary school, where the children are delighted by every monochromatic outfit (I did 14 days of all pink outfits for the first 14 days of February), every novelty sweater, every cluttery cascade of lollipop earrings and jangly costume rings and printed tights. I’ve never felt happier about my fashion choices or more myself when I get dressed. And I can’t ignore that it’s extremely on trend to be so… individual. The trend is uniqueness. The trend is outfits that look like clowns getting dressed in the dark. Basketball shorts and socks with heels and bloomers and oversize tees and curly hair. Outfits so outrageous they could only work on the bold. I don’t care if it’s on trend, I think I’m tired of wanting my style to be a thing that exists free of the orbit of trendiness. There is so much joy to be had in fashion. I forgot about it for a while when I was picking my proportions to death in the mirror. Working with children every day, the joy of dressing has come back in a major way. I can’t wear all my cute outfits to work, so while school is out for the year, I am having something of a Brat summer2 , full of skimpy tank tops and short shorts.
Twenty-Seven is not a year that Emily of New Moon wrote about, but it feels like it could have been. It has a more fey air to it than straight laced Twenty-Six or Eight.
“Oh Twenty-Seven, are you married? Do you have children? Have you placed your name upon the scroll at the top of the Alpine Path?” - Seventeen, in this hypothetical letter I never wrote3
Seventeen wanted a husband (and no more gay thoughts) and a house and garden and kids by now. I have a dear husband4 and a cluttered city apartment, with traffic noises coming in past the smell of the lilac candle on the coffee table. As for kids, I have two black cats who I love like children, and the song “I think about it all the time” by CharliXCX.5
“How you spend your days, is, of course, how you spend your life.” - Annie Dillard
How I spent today:
7:00am: I wake up at my parents’ house, after visiting for the weekend to see my brother and his kids. I spend some time crocheting a baby blanket (new niece or nephew coming in September and I take my role as the creator-of-heirlooms-Aunt very seriously), and then M and I drive home to Chicago.
8:00am: we stop to get breakfast sandwiches and coffee on the way home. I read him tweets and we bemoan the state of Twitter. He plays me Bob Dylan. I play him Ethel Cain.
10:00am: we arrive home. We feed our cats. I unpack my backpack. I drink the rest of my coffee sitting at my computer. I light a lilac candle and we open the windows to air out the apartment.
12:00pm: M makes cheese and tomato quesadillas (we were going to have grilled cheese but we were out of bread) and then he goes to the store. While he is at the store I unload the dishwasher, clean out the fridge, and load the dishwasher. I fix some iced lemonade and watch the last episode of Trixie Motel: Drag Me Home.6
1:00pm: I make a Tiktok from footage M took of me twirling at my childhood park yesterday. The setting sun does marvellous things to my cherry-red hair, and I impose a spooky, mourning-doves-and-laughing-children musical audio, along with a caption about how many ghosts of your past self you run into in your hometown. Though I have 1,504 Tiktok followers, my video gets an average amount of views for me (386), with 52 likes, 1 comment, and 3 saves.
3:00pm: it is late at night in Ireland, where my hero Taylor Swift is playing her third night in Dublin on the Eras world tour. I tune in to the livestreams for the Secret Songs, and see that Stevie Nicks is in attendance. I predict she will play Clara Bow7 as one of the Secret Songs. I am correct.8
4:00pm: I change the sheets and duvet cover and quilt9, and Daphne cat scampers under the sheets.
5:00pm: I begin writing a substack about my half birthday and how I am spending my year/life.
6:00pm: I switch to watching youtuber reactions to albums I like10, to give myself space mentally from this post and let me come back to it with slightly fresher eyes later. I browse ebay for vintage pillowcases.
7:00pm: I eat spaghetti carbonara made by M for dinner, with bacon and peas and creamy noodles. It is delicious.
8:00pm: I play an ARAM on discord with two of my siblings. Steam is having a summer sale, so I get the DLC for House Flipper, and then play House Flipper with my brother online until -
11:30pm: I creep into bed, trying not to wake my husband who has been asleep for hours
To close this rambling blog post of a personal essay, have some of my existential thoughts, bouncing around my head on my half-birthday as I assess my life:
When does a person start knowing that they are ready to move to the next phase of their life? Will I ever feel ready to be a mother or like I want a baby in a real and visceral way? Will I stop being the kind of person who would be an impatient and unhappy and miserable mother?
Have I wasted my “young years”11 crocheting and typing on the Internet and organizing embroidery thread by DMC number? Have I given up on alcohol too young? Did I wait too long to get my fillings redone because I was embarrassed to say something was wrong? Have I stopped writing poetry for any other reason than that happiness is not very interesting to read about, and that it doesn’t drive me to bleed onto a page?
Will I ever get “wasted”, I wonder?
My grandfather is 99 and he is my last grandparent who is alive, and I don’t call him, and I know I will regret it, even though according to my dad, he is not really very coherent anymore. Do I show my love in a real enough way to the people in my life who I love? Am I too selfish? Am I getting all of my plums early, and I will eat vinegar later? My sister talks about giving up sugar, just to see if she can. I have no such impulse, and I barely understand why she has it. Have I gone too far on my swing away from Puritanical self-flagellating discipline?
Am I a writer, if all I make is 3-4 substack posts a year, and a couple of poems in my notes app? Am I just a “tiktokker”, always looking at my sacred life like a queasy vampire, sucking the content from it and spitting it out, profaned and monetizable, into the void? Am I selling myself too cheaply? Is my sharing embarrassing and humiliating and whorish? Do I have room for myself, any room of my own, a truly private space where I don’t let the masses in? Is there only dignity in privacy? Is sharing inherently cheapening? Why is Tiktok an embarrassing kind of sharing, but acting in an indie film a dignified kind of sharing? At least with Tiktok I control the edit.
Why don’t I like my wedding photos anymore only one year later, and is it only because I weigh more in them than I do now? How dare I be that which I don’t like, both in the photos and in my criticism of the photos? When will I turn off the gaze of/upon myself that is inspecting if I am aging too quickly and if my smile has too much gum and if the ratio of my torso to my legs is strange, and will I ever be satisfied with myself, consider myself finished, and move on to thinking about ANYTHING more interesting and useful? Why is beauty and fashion inherently frivolous and un-useful? Why do things have to be useful to be worth my time and thought?
“Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon? Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” - Mary Oliver12
My husband notes that July 1, or even later, would be the true halfway point between December 31s, but I argue it is about the spirit of the thing. My half birthday could not be any day other than the last of a month; it wouldn’t feel right. And besides, his birthday is January 1. I refuse to impeach upon HIS half birthday.
Listen to CharliXCX’s major new album “brat” for more.
At 18 (and three months) I did in fact write a letter to myself in ten years. That fun little time/nostalgia bomb is waiting for me next March.
and mostly out and very proud bisexual contentment, mainly exorcised these days via Chappell Roan.
Once again, see “brat” for more.
She really had me worried about that fireplace for a long time.
“You look like Stevie Nicks, in ‘75, the hair and lips, crowd goes wild at her fingertips, half moonshine, a full eclipse” - excerpt from Clara Bow, off of Taylor Swift’s latest record The Tortured Poets Department.
Clara Bow x The Lucky One mashup on guitar, You’re On You’re Own Kid* piano (*Stevie’s favorite Taylor tune).
I am a great believer in the power of the Sunday reset, a little cleaning your space ritual where you do your best to return your home to neutral/clean before the week begins. Lately I am lighting candles again.
Ashley Ippolito’s reaction to The Tortured Poets Department, this time.
Wasting My Young Years, by London Grammar. An excellent song.
The thing I always have to remind myself after this face-slap of a poem is that the thing that Mary Oliver decided to do with her wild and precious life within this poem was… pay attention to a grasshopper. No roaring crowds or finish lines or children or accolades. Just a little green thing, and her looking at it. Don’t cudgel yourself with “your one wild and precious life.” I suspect it’s the last thing she would have wanted to be part of her legacy.