My little sister turned 18 yesterday.

And I feel ancient. One of the weird things about going to college, or leaving home in general, I guess, is how while you're off growing and changing, it's really easy to forget that everyone you left back home is growing and changing too. When I started my freshman year, my brother and sister were 13 and 14, respectively. They were practically still little kids in my head: W was in 8th grade and A's first day of high school was about a week before I moved in. But now A's high school graduation is two days after my graduation from Princeton, and they're 17 and 18 as of a few hours ago. 

Is it weird that knowing that I can remember all 18 years of A's life makes me feel older than simply being 22? Is it weird that her graduating high school almost feels weirder than me graduating college? I'm not ready for me to be an adult--how can she be one?

Reblogged from Indie. Radiant.

Best birthday week ever:

So I turned 22 at the end of January, on Sunday the 29th. We started celebrating on Saturday, though, because some friends were going out of town on a ski trip, which means my week of birthday celebrations is coming to a close. 

It has, without a doubt, been the absolute best birthday week of my short life. 

Saturday the 28th, I got a text message from JA telling me not to make dinner plans. She and JC came to meet KS and I at the library where we'd been working and asked me where I wanted to dinner. I wanted to trek to a good Chinese place that was a little ways away and pick up a bottle of wine on the way, so after we met up with MM, that's exactly what we did. When we stopped at the liquor store on the way to the Chinese food place--it's BYOB--MM bought me a bottle of Ciroc as a birthday gift, and I picked up a good Moscato to have with dinner. MJP met us there. Dinner was great and we had ridiculous conversation as I always have with my good friends (even if there was an awkward moment when I blurted out that my mom has cancer...there's never a good time to tell people that, but that was probably one of the worst times). They treated me to my meal, and I was glad that that whole group could get together again to celebrate me. 

Sunday the 29th was my actual birthday. My mom and my Nana drove up to campus to bring me one of Nana's famous homemade Great-Aunt-Mabel's-secret-family-recipe birthday cakes and homemade pecan brittle, along with a giant bag of pecans straight from Georgia. They stayed and chatted for about an hour, then made excuses when I asked them to have lunch with me and headed home. I laid around for a little while in my bed doing ABSOLUTELY NOTHING til that got boring and I headed to the house, where I read blogs and chilled for a few hours while my friend CB put together a dinner at a fancy Italian restaurant for me. A bunch of my Quad friends got together and took me to dinner, where ChoosingPancakes told the waitress it was my birthday and they brought me tiramisu with a candle in it. It was cute, and no one has ever really done that for me before--once we let it slip that it was my birthday when I was at home with my family and SH, but that we had cakes waiting at home, and the waiter brought me a tiny container of whipped cream with a candle in it, which was cute, but no one had ever intentionally notified the wait-staff that it was my birthday in order to surprise me with a birthday treat before. After dinner, we went back to the house and played Apples to Apples, which I am evidently terrible at because I didn't get any cards, haha. Then some of my other (pre-Quad friends) started to show up. We had, of course, turned Apples to Apples into a drinking game, and when more people started to show up, we devolved into just drinking. Then BC wanted to go sleep, so we had cake before he left and more people started to show up, and RC surprised me with a bottle of Disaronno, an incredibly delicious Italian amaretto, while MH and KG gave me a collection of hair products that hadn't worked for them but might for me. We were all sitting on the floor, talking and drinking, when ChoosingPancakes did the absolute cutest thing anyone has ever done for me on my birthday: she made everyone in the room share their favorite memory of me. Some of my friends were silly, but some of them (her included) were incredibly poignant, and I started to tear up a little. (Had I been sober, I would probably have started crying. +1 for alcohol's ability to dull my senses.) A bunch of people were doing a thesis boot camp in the morning, so shortly after said sharing and caring, half of my party contingent left, and the rest of us moved downstairs for some beirut. I played two games of three-on-three, and won both games. It was all in all a fabulous night, slightly tainted only by the fact that someone who shall not be named tried to go home with me (I blogged about that already). 

Monday passed fairly uneventfully, if I recall. On Tuesday, I got an email from the Package Room saying I had a package to pick up, and I knew I hadn't purchased anything recently, so I was intrigued as to what it might be. I went to pick it up, and it was the entire line of Twisted Sista products, that I had won on a Brown Girl Gumbo giveaway! What a great birthday present! 

On Wednesday, I got another mysterious email from the Package Room. I still hadn't bought anything, so I excitedly went to the Student Center, wondering what this might be. Surprise, surprise--it was a present from my friend RG! He sent me three good CDs (Erykah Badu, Rafael Saadiq, and Marvin Gaye) and a picture of us from my birthday party last year. I had been surprised by RC's gift, but this garnered genuine shock. I'm a simple girl; making me feel recognized is like, the highest honor anyone can bestow on me. Call me cheesy, but I was touched. It was like, the icing on this huge multi-tiered cake of love and appreciation my friends gave me this week—I can’t remember the last time I felt so deeply cared about. 

On Thursday, TN came down from Rutgers to take me out to dinner, since she couldn’t make it down over the weekend. We went to Alchemist and Barrister, another restaurant in town that I’d never been to, and I had hot apple cider with butterscotch schnapps (omg) and a delicious chicken pot pie. I caught up on her life and she caught up on mine and it was weird how much we didn’t know about what was going on with each other. She’s another example of how I need to do better at maintaining my friendships. (Side note, I feel like she’s hardcore judging me for no-longer-recent exploits, but whatever.) When we got back to her car, she gave me my second present (besides dinner): an awesome framed piece of art with a bird outside of a birdcage, and it’s drawn or painted on a page from a dictionary. I’m not doing it justice—maybe I’ll upload a picture when I get back to campus—but it’s SO ME. So I guess she’s an example of how even when my deep friendships change on the surface, the degree to which my friends know or understand me doesn’t change even as we grow and develop and mature.

By Friday, I was like, okay, this week has to slow down. It has just been too awesome. I was wrong. So, so very wrong. There I was, chilling at work, pretending to write my thesis, when I get a phone call. It’s from a number I don’t know, and I was contemplating whether or not to pick it up when some part of my brain was like, wait, isn’t 202 the area code for D.C.? *picks up the phone immediately* It was the woman from Human Resources at Mathematica, calling to tell me that the interview team thought that I’d be a really great fit, and she’d like to offer me the position!

I wish I had a video of me jumping up and down in the basement lobby of Fine Hall.

Like, WHAT?! This much awesomeness can happen to me in one week? I’ve been told it’s important not to seem to eager, so I thanked her profusely and agreed to get back to her by the end of the following week about whether I’d like to accept. I then called my momma and my daddy and texted some important people and tweeted and Facebooked and couldn’t wait to get out of work and celebrate…

…which actually basically waited until the next night, when KS, JB, and I drove up to New Brunswick to go to Delta’s, this soul food place I discovered but failed to actually eat at over the summer, and which we’ve been telling ourselves we’ll explore for months. When we made our reservations—because they close to people without reservations on the weekends, as KS, TN, and I learned once in the Fall—they asked us if we were aware of their dress code: “casual chic,” meaning no baggy jeans, no workboots, etc. Toto, I don’t think we’re in the dining hall anymore, lol. I wore a dress from Shabby Apple that I’d won on a Naturally Beautiful Hair giveaway towards the end of last year and hadn’t found an occasion for yet, while KS wore a nice button up shirt and khakis and dress shoes, and I do say we looked pretty shnazzy (though he did still get carded, while our waitress like, turned down seeing JB’s and my IDs, bahaha).  We started off with fried calamari and seafood gumbo as appetizers, with a pitcher of peach sangria to share between the three of us. The breading on the calamari was DIVINE, and my gumbo was spicy but rich enough that it just went down smoothly and deliciously. Then after lamenting about how we actually wanted to eat everything. on. the. menu., we finally settled on the following: for me, smothered pork chops with sides of mac and cheese and candied yams; for KS, ox tail with sides of black eyed peas and rice and collard greens; and for JB, a fried seafood medley including shrimp and catfish, with hush puppies and yams. Our plates were so full, and sweet Jesus the food was indescribably amazing. There was live jazz/R&B happening behind us and I wanted to die of satisfaction with every bite…I truly don’t think I’ve ever enjoyed an eating experience as much as I enjoyed Delta’s. We made the decision right then and there that the three of us are eating there at reunions indefinitely into the future, and that KS and I might bring our families there for graduation dinner. 

…What is my life?

     

If There's a Prize for Rotten Judgment...

Sigh. It's been really hard for me to focus all day. And I feel like it's not going to get any better unless I get this out of my head: it's his birthday today. Yes, him--the him who managed to bring my world crashing down around me twice in 3 years, first by walking out of my life and second by inviting himself back in. He who really just the sight of his name has reduced me to a Fistful of Tears. He who I've known for all 20 of my years. Today he's 20 too. He's exactly two and a half weeks younger than me, you see. Our Moms used to joke that we should have a joint birthday party, since it would save them money and we did everything else together anyway.

I hate that today is the day after yesterday--it's like the Universe plays this cruel trick on my where I can never unlink the two.

Last April, after two and a half years, he made a Facebook to find me and sent me a message that literally made my knees give out and sent me crashing down into my chair. It was a Friday afternoon and I was instantly crying and trying not to let my mascara run because I had Spanish 108 in about ten minutes. He wanted to talk. He wanted me back. It took a lot of soul-searching and friend-conferring and determination not to scream and (this was a fail) not to cry before I called him. We talked for almost two hours, a lot of it me being stronger than I'd known I could and firmly saying that we could be friends, but too much had happened for us to be anything more; we weren't the people we were then.  My roommate congratulated me, but that night I couldn't sleep; I just felt so empty. I wound up sneaking out into the living room curling up in the window seat and sobbing so hard I woke her up and then screamed at her when she came to console me.

The next day I spent hours and hours listening to Ne-yo's "Do You" on repeat, wondering if my decision had been a mistake too. I messaged him back and said that maybe I'd been wrong and obviously I wasn't comfortable with my decision and maybe we should try and he said no, that I'd been right and he wasn't right for me anymore. He said we could still be friends. And then he deleted the Facebook he'd made to find me and I haven't heard from him again.

I deleted his number after a few months, trying to reclose that chapter of my life.

Facebook still had it. Wasn't that hard to find.

I know it's a bad idea, but I really want to contact him before the day is over. Now that I can, I want to wish him a Happy Birthday. And it's not just because of yesterday--it's not! I promise. I really meant it when I said I wanted him to stay a part of my life, that I wanted us to be friends. And it really hurt me when he took that as an opportunity to walk back out of my life again. So I shouldn't even be considering giving him the chance to come back in, right?

Meg's song from Hercules seems appropriate here:

"If there's a prize for rotten judgment, I guess I've already won that. No man is worth the aggravation...it's ancient history--been there, done that. (Who you think you kiddin, he's the Earth and Heaven to ya; try to keep it hidden, honey we can see right through ya... *insert all the words I've forgotten here* I thought my heart had learned its lesson; it feels so good when you start out. My head is screamin get a grip, girl, unless you're dying to cry your heart out..."

Happy Birthday to Me, Happy Birthday to Me, Happy Birthdayyyy

So if you couldn't tell by the title, today was my birthday. It was a surprisingly good one, actually. My friends and family are wonderful. <3

And haha, the best thing happened to me within the very first minutes of my birthday. I was at the bowling alley with some friends, and after they sang to me at midnight, on my next turn they were like, "This turn will predict the epicness of your twenties!" And I got all nervous and only bowled a 7 and it was sad. But then the lane we were using, like, self-destructed after I bowled that seven...the pins didn't get picked up and the balls didn't come back, and the bowling alley employees couldn't fix it, so they had to move us to a new lane, and it took us back a turn, so I got to re-do my first bowl, AND GOT A STRIKE! It was as if the Universe said, oh no, Maya, that is not a good enough epicness indicator: REDO. It was pretty great. :D


Now that my day is winding down, it's time for a Private Party, India.Arie style. I'm 20 today. That deserves a "Baby, look how far we've come."  A whole new decade of my life is opening up. When we think about the fact that we'd just survived the Y2K scare and I was in the 4th grade the last time this happened to me, I should be expecting a whole mess of growing and changing and changes in the coming years. It's kind of crazy to wonder what this decade is going to do to/for me: finishing college, probably going to grad school (I've been thinking law recently...), getting a real job and becoming a functional member of society...

My new motto in life is to roar, loudly and confidently and make my presence known. I mean, they were called the Roaring 20s, right? Might as well take advantage of that, stop being such a scaredy-cat, and live my life out loud, with the volume turned way WAY up.

I was scared in the past couple weeks that I wasn't "old enough to be 20." When I was younger, I always imagined that by the time I was in my 20s, I would know what I wanted to do and be on track to accomplishing some major goals in my life...and I didn't think I was. But then today I stopped to take a look at where I am and how far exactly I have come, and I'm right on time. "Life is a journey, not a destination", right? That means schedules can be rearranged a little for the trip's sake. After all, I'm the only me there's ever gonna be, right? I gotta make my own journey count for something, even if I'm the only person it matters to.

I got this great birthday message from this website I'm subscribed to today. I'll copy and paste the best part here: You see, someone like Maya Reid doesn't come along all that often. In fact, there's never been a single one like you, nor is there ever ANY possibility that another will come again. You're an Angel among us. Someone whose eyes see what no others will EVER see, whose ears hear what no others will EVER hear, and whose perspective and feelings will NEVER ever be duplicated.Without YOU, the Universe, and ALL THAT IS, would be sadly less than it is.

Today of all days, I will not be critical. I will not laugh at that statement and wonder bemusedly if the person writing it was cracking up. I will simply accept that my existence matters to someone out there, to a lot of someones out there...most importantly of all, to me.

And I think that today of all days, that should be shown. Here's a poem I wrote for Valentine's Day and will perform on campus in about two weeks:

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True Love


Restin my arms on this table, lookin into those eyes I see that you

love me. Real love, like I can remember my mama listenin to

Mary J searchin for when I was too little to even sing along

That lift me up and make me feel like I can fly like Maxwell gave me Pretty Wings like me screamin

“Faster, Daddy, Faster!” on the swingset in Burch Grove Park when I was five

kind of love. I wanted him to spin my head right round, right round go over the top and

turn inside out like that boy on TV. But you already know me inside and out.

You love with that protective kind of love, like seat belt races and a pink bike helmet for my 6th birthday.

A proud kind of love, like That’s my baby! at graduation even though I made her promise not to.

You love me like you know me like he wanted me to know my people when I was 13 and he made me watch Roots, all four DVDs.

With a love that knows its own history, like what we made November 4, 2008, in what was once called the Third World Center, right across the street.

It ain’t that foolish kind of love, no: Only through loving you have I ever truly been able to see.

With that celebratory love: with no shame, you congratulate me when I accomplish something and you remind me of my strengths when I feel weak.

You love me with a love that grew, like my little sister’s hair has since her flat iron caught on fire.

With that deep kind of love, deep like the trenches in the Atlantic Ocean where my ancestors lay.

That rollercoaster, keep-your-hands-and-feet-inside-the-car-cuz-this-is-gon-be-one-helluva-ride kind of love.

With that spontaneous love, that “I wanna go dancing in the rain” “Okay let’s go” kind of love.

That nitty-gritty not afraid to put your hands in my fro kind of love.

Not that romantic comedy omg isn’t everything just so freaking perfect kind of love, no

You love me honestly, like I’ma give it to ya straight, but only because I know you’re worth the truth

Truth, like Sojourner, you will make journeys for me. We got that ain’t no mountain high enough kind of love.

And it’s a strong love, strong like that football player my momma wouldn’t me date when I was 15 who could bench press me

We got that faithful kind of love, the kind where you will never cheat on me, never con out of knowing how phenomenal I truly am, a gift Maya Angelou gave me when I was 8.

It’s that curious kind of love: you’re constantly trying to peel back my layers and find out what’s inside.

And some might call it a free love, not that hippie spread-your-legs for anybody type of B.S. , but a Monica Now I know why they say the best things are free love

And I think we’re ready for it to be an open love; we don’t gotta hide it no more, like when I was 7 seeing Hercules in theaters and Meg wouldn’t say she’s in love.

And if we’re gonna be open about it, I guess we should start right now: if my girl India were here right now, she’d call this my Private Party. True love begins with me. I wrote this poem looking in a mirror.



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Ps, you know how folks always ask you if you feel older on your birthday? I usually think that's a dumb question, but today I almost do. I...have a recognition of the fact that I will be getting a lot older soon. Is that the same thing? Also, I had a glass of wine today and am planning a trip to see a concert with my friends all with the help of no adults...we are the adults. I realized that today. Today I can say this and actually believe it: I am an adult, and I finally feel like one.

*ROARRRRRRRRRR!*