44
On 11/22/2023 I turned 44 years old. My Obama Year.
It started off with me abruptly waking up from a dream that could very well have been viewed as a nightmare. The Ghost of Christmas Past was the first thing that came to mind because of the various dead people in the dream… some were dead in the literal sense (see: my father being present) and others were dead figuratively speaking (see: we don’t fuck with each other anymore)… but it isn’t Christmas so I suppose I can just call them the Ghosts of my Past. All of the “dead” were trying to speak to me but I could not hear their voices or understand their words. One person in particular called me on the phone and they were trying to communicate but there was too much interference to make out anything but them saying my name. Hearing my name woke me out of the dream to the point that I immediately grabbed my phone to see if I had missed a call or made one in my sleep. It felt real and with these types of dreams I usually look for deeper meaning and definition. However, I didn’t feel a need for clarity.
Two of my closest friends told me a couple of days before my birthday that they had lost their grandfather and mother to the eternal nap. I placed the grief in the compartment I hold for my favorite grandmother who was buried on my birthday in 2012. Despite being able to hold some space for them, it wasn’t draining. I also knew that was all the space I was giving up this week for death.
Another friend asked me if this was or would be a year of reflection for me because she knew it was for others who had turned 44. I can honestly say that every birthday is a year of reflection. I don’t necessarily wait until November 22nd every year to reflect on the time I’ve spent in this earthly realm. I cannot imagine living my life without regularly looking at the past, present, and how it will affect my future. I don’t know any other way to live because life is always about the sum of all my parts.
Is something different this year than any of the other years? There’s a shift but not something so significant that I could lay it out for anyone. You’d have to have lived my life to see and feel it. Nobody else in the world has lived THIS life but me though… but I do think there’s a spirit of reinforcement solidifying that’s directly connected to my future. I’ve always wanted better for myself and I’ve never stopped moving towards it; it’s becoming a lot easier to separate myself from things and people who aren’t aligned with this growth trajectory. Maybe that’s why the dead were in my dreams. They were all people I’ve been trying to make sense of why things ended how they did and questioning if there was an opportunity to get clarity, would it even matter? Would they ever willingly give it? And is this just another push for closure I haven’t fully given myself? Because let’s be honest, the dead, literal or figurative, aren’t always concerned with closure in the ways the living cling to it.
Part of me thinks this should have been posted in the Memento Mori section because of all the death/dead references. Despite that thought, I know this is being written in the right place. Turning 44 was a reminder that I still have a lot of life to live but I’m also grateful for the reminder to let dead things go. So, here’s to 44 and many more magical years to come.
