Portrait at 21

Happy birthday to me. I actually made it. Funny how no age is ever how you thought it’d be, though. At fourteen, I thought I’d have a boyfriend, a car and be at NYU studying film at eighteen. Well, I did the NYU thing, just not film. At eighteen, I’d thought I’d have my own apartment, be getting ready to graduate college and going out every night at twenty-one. Well, I have no plans to graduate, let alone return to school, and I rarely go out as I can’t bare the sight of most people. I’m already an old man, it seems. So at twenty-one, I don’t know where or who I’ll be at thirty. I only have fears of what and who I don’t want to be. For instance, I’m terrified at the prospect of working the same job day in, day out for the next ten, five, or even two years. I’m afraid I’ll still be depressed, alone and weighed down by the baggage of previous years. And I dread losing myself along the way. Now, I’m not afraid of getting old, rather, I welcome it. What I fear is getting old and realizing I’m just as miserable as I was ten years ago. And by miserable, I really mean poor. Because let’s face it, as long as I can afford to buy my happiness in bulk…I’ll feel that I’ve won.

Twenty-one is one of those magic numbers. A threshold year. It’s built up in our adolescent American minds as the final frontier, the official end of your childhood in the eyes of the law and your parents. Clearly we stop seeing ourselves as children once we become teenagers. After all, no one knows the complicated feelings and emotions we experience. They are real, they are painful, they are therefore adult. But I stopped seeing myself as a child when I became a teen for different reasons. When you have no one to treat you as their child, no one to call “Mom” or “Dad” you cease being a child. You’re just a kid. No one’s in particular, you’re nothing special except maybe someone to be pitied. But how I detest pity. But since I was fourteen, I’ve always felt grown-up, more or less. I worked to put food on the table and to help pay bills, and I suffered the consequences of failing to provide for myself. That, I know now, was not true adulthood. There was a safety net, a very shoddy one, but a net nonetheless. There was a great deal of slack afforded to me for my age. There was free lunch at school and friends to whom I could turn when dinnertime rolled around and nothing was left in the cupboards. And there was my brother who tried, but couldn’t quite live up to his role as my guardian. But at twenty-one, the net is all but a faint memory. I’m my own guardian, responsible for myself; I can’t blame anyone for the mistakes I make. Too bad, as shifting blame is one of the cornerstones of childhood. As for school, college gives you its warm insulation from the cold real world and without that, you have to find your own. Thankfully, I still have friends.

When my mom died, I didn’t know to whom to turn or what to do. Suddenly, my family didn’t feel like a family. It was always my mother and I, and occasionally my brother. We came over to this country together and lived in a small one-bedroom apartment together. She was the anchor of my life, and with her gone I was a castaway, adrift at sea. I needed something to latch onto and my friends were the most likely candidates. So they became my family. My friendships mean more to me than anything in the world, so it hurts most when they hurt me. I try not to let it affect me, try not to let anyone see just how much it hurts me to be neglected by them. It feels like being abandoned all over again. And to avoid that, I’d rather be the one to do the abandoning--it gives me some power back. You lose power when you let someone into your life, into who you are, who you were and who you hope to be—-similar to the power I’m giving you as the reader. It comes with loving someone and hoping they love you back. I didn’t know that for the longest time and it was painfully hard to learn. My first deep friendship was hard to live through. When she hurt me It hurt more than anyone else had ever hurt me before and I wanted to hurt her just as much as she had me. So we fought constantly, but when I needed her she was there (usually) and when she needed me, I was there (usually). We had to work through all of our fighting and I had to let her in and thankfully she was patient enough to wait for me. If anything, I looked forward to my 21st birthday to celebrate it with my friends, as without them, I doubt I would have made it this far. I didn’t care about the actual birthday because as far as I was concerned, the age couldn’t tell me anything I hadn’t already known. It was the celebration that would allow me to reflect on the journey. Therefore, it was paramount that the most important people in my life be there to celebrate it with me. The fact that some weren’t there hurts more than I thought it would. But then again, I could just be on my period. My breasts have been rather tender as of late. Or maybe I’m just realizing what’s really important in life. Drugs, drinking and going out every night are great, but it’s not what makes life worth all the bullshit it puts you through. What makes it worth it are the people whose voices on the other side of the phone make your heart just a bit lighter and whose presence means more to you than any gift. Oh, god, when did I become a Lifetime movie of the week? “Not Without My Stepdaughter’s Autistic Husband: The Mary Kay Johansson-Franklin Story.” If you’ll excuse me, I need to stop writing this and go cry on the floor of the bathroom.