Dalia Does…Quarter Life
Being young is stressful.
It’s my birthday this week. I’ve also accumulated lots of friends whose birthdays fall around the same time. So not only do I have to deal with the mood swings of all these Cancer bitches (myself included), but all I hear this time of year is complaints about how old they’re getting, how little they’ve achieved, how many grey hairs they’ve got and how much skinnier they were last year. For me, my problem is quite the opposite (apart from the skinnier part, I was always skinnier last year): I’m still so young.
The thing is, I’ve always felt, looked and behaved older than I am. When my friends would head to the park after school to play on the swings/indulge in underage drinking/meet boys from other schools, I’d be called uptight for preferring a trip to Starbucks for a non-fat cappuccino (I told you I was skinnier) and a quick browse of the foreign films section at Virgin. That’s not to say I’m more intelligent, cultured or worldly than my peers – it’s more like I felt a rush to grow up; to get to the point. Now, there’s no doubt that I’m a fully-fledged adult but ‘the point’ is still as elusive ever. It feels like nothing has changed. Welcome to my quarter-life crisis.
Now I know how annoying it is to wallow in the misery of my young age, so I’m determined to make a change. I’m going to have a birthday party that will go down in history, one that will punctuate the story of my life. This year’s chapter might be empty, but goddamnit I’m going to have one hell of a fancy bookmark. My birthday celebration planning has just one very strict rule: it will be appropriate for my age. 24 – the world is my oyster! After much deliberation, the short-list is as follows:
1. Get dressed, go out, get wasted
2. Get dressed, get dinner, go out, get wasted.
3. Go to the beach, get tanned, get wasted.
4. Get high, go to the movies, get popcorn.
Totally age appropriate, right? I mean, like, I’m in my twenties and that’s what all the cool kids are doing. I’ll invite my friends, they’ll invite their friends and before you know it, we’ll all be basking in the glow of my almost-mid-twenties. We’ll go to the bathroom in threes, screech song requests at the DJ (or seat requests to the nice lady at the cinema ticket booth), go on four separate cigarette runs and eat just about anything offered to us. A male friend will buy me a platonic drink and I’ll respond with so much enthusiasm, you’d think it was a marriage proposal. We will all get better looking, realise how much we really love each other and shoot dirty looks at anyone who seems to be having equal or higher amounts of fun as us. When someone is kind enough to give me a gift, I’ll react as though they’ve just told me the meaning of life and return the favour with two long hugs and one short, but extra hard, one. If everything goes to plan, we will leave wherever we are minus one shoe, a phone and 3 earrings but with 7 extra lighters. When I get home, I’ll write a Facebook status adequately demonstrating my appreciation for all the wall posts and probably end it with an ‘X’ and stalk some guy I sort of had a thing with two years ago and wonder why he didn’t tell me to “have a blast” or “enjoy it to the max” in front of the rest of my online friends. If my family are around, I’ll most likely blow out some candles and cut myself a slice of cake that’s actually the equivalent of two slices before re-checking my Facebook. It will be late and I will worry about getting up on time the next morning. I’ll get a tardy happy birthday text, followed by a brief conversation, ending with “Oh, you’re still so young!” and I’ll never have felt older.
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