Guess who hit the quarter century mark last week? That's right: yours truly. As of Wednesday, August 20, 2008 I am officially 25 years old.
In the grand tradition of my last, oh, four birthdays, I spent the weeks leading up to my big day appeasing myself with unnecessary but oh so consolatory material trappings like fancy new purses (and matching wallets, and matching passport cases...don't look so disapproving, Hayden Harnett was practically having a yard sale!) and a vintage YSL Rive Gauche day dress. Because it's all downhill after 21 right? I was very, very concerned that I was going to wake up on the 25th anniversary of my birth and suddenly feel psychologically ill-equipped to get out of bed, not in the least because on my 24th birthday I woke up feeling psychologically ill-equipped to get out of bed, and probably would have for numero 23 as well had I not been hung over enough to forget the dubious occasion. I went to bed at 11:30 pm on my birthday's eve, thinking that maybe if I were asleep for the 19th-to-20th changeover I would be able to avoid or at least assuage what would surely be a seismic shift from young adulthood to actual adulthood. And I woke up with my alarm at 7:15am, sunlight streaming into my bedroom, and thought, "Hell yes - I'm a woman now!"
I know. I did not expect that either. I expected to suffer a panic attack the moment I rolled out of bed, or at the very least melt down when I looked in the mirror and spotted three gray hairs and a serious pair of crow's feet. But I did not. I rolled out of bed and thought, "I am a woman now and as such I will kick off my adulthood in a navy blue silk faille dress from Marc Jacobs and the leopard print stilettos from Bottega Veneta that I never wear because they are just so very...leopard print." And I marched to my closet with fire in my eyes and hunger for fine Italian footwear in my belly. And I owned my 25th birthday.
I'm not telling this story in an effort to demonstrate just how neurotic I am, as I would really only consider myself averagely to just above averagely neurotic, nor am I trying to convey a theme of materialism to correspond with my perceived sudden adulthood. I'm actually not very materialistic at all; I just like to have nice things, and I've inherited something of a tendency toward packrattiness from my mother, which occasionally results in me being unable to stop myself from accumulating the nice things at an alarming clip. I'm telling this story because - fuck, I totally forgot why I'm telling this story. I'm obviously suffering from age-related memory loss. And have been since I was about 12. That or ADHD. Anyway, my point is that I'm 25 now and I'm okay with it. Heck, I'm more than okay with it: I'm psyched. This is my world, you all just live in it.
All that said, not all soon-to-be-25-year-olds will be so pleased with their newly acquired age, so you should avoid making the toast my friend Jess made at my birthday dinner: "Here's to 25 more!" Um, yeah, Jess. Here's to dying at 50. Now, you'll have to excuse me while I go contemplate potential midlife crises.
