I’ll admit it. On July 15, at approximately 12:20 am, I was in quite a setting. The entrance leading to Dolphin Mall’s Cobb Cinemas carried a distinctive air of…tension. Tension between excitement and angst, wails of glory and silence, exaggeration and nonchalance. I mostly just looked around, hand around JK’s arm until the security officers let us through. I was nervous. I was firstly nervous that I would get trampled to death in this tunnel of hormones and never see the outside world again. I was also nervous because my earliest memory of having a real connection with this famous series was when I first moved to Miami in the summer of 2000. It was my 8th birthday, and I was sitting on the couch of my grandmother’s apartment just a couple of days after my tio drove us from Fairfax, VA to Miami, FL….just a couple of days after I left that life filled with alphabet flash cards, blonde-haired classmates, and winter boots behind. My birthday falls on the 8th of July, so my 8th birthday was supposed to be my “golden” birthday, or so I was told.
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire was published on July 8, 2000 and that is what I found underneath some wrapping paper on my grandmother’s couch. Nothing mattered to me more than that moment, because amid the terror (or what seemed like terror in my awkward-girl-with-glasses-and-boyish-haircut time) was something that brought hope. Books have always been an escape to a faraway land for me. Something so out of this universe, that I always try and bring back with me in the smallest instances of this life. To continue the story, to once again dive deep, deep, into another world where I feel more accepted by giants and wizards than my soon-to-be classmates, was the greatest birthday gift I have ever received. No wait, it ties with another one. The best birthday gift I have ever received was a ticket to the midnight showing of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2…to finally sum up my experience with line after line of that rich and beautiful text that I would light up with a flashlight under the covers at 2 am.
(Source: bluevirgin, via pavlovmonoxide)
Florence and the Machine plus Taylor Hanson mid-air during a concert a good Sunday does make.
August 1, 2010
And then comes August 2, and August 3, and more days made of carbon dioxide, it seems.
The clock ticks—20 pairs of eyes on it—silence—the bell rings. Some shoulders relax, some breaths quicken, some voices squeal. Relief, excitement, joy. The last 2:20 bell we will ever depend on. High school is over.
The minute after, the minute after, I’m yapping about August. I never really thought it would come though. Heck no. Not in a million years.
It’s like when you fantasize about marrying the most ridiculously handsome man in the world…cough..Taylor Hanson. Anyway, we get the satisfaction of just thinking about it, yet we’re fine with the fact that it will never happen.
But August is a reality—it always has been. June and July were filled with fantasies about August and here it is. 24 days until I leave my family, friends, and palm trees behind until December. And it feels great. It really does. But how could something that feels so great instill so much fear in me?
I want to experience more of it; more of what makes life worth living. At the same time, my human nature is terrified of leaving comfort behind.
But this is it! This is so much more than all of my fantasies put together! I am going to the college of my dreams! Literally! I dreamed of beautiful buildings and of white snowflakes and of loud arenas….I will be living my dream in 24 days.
I will try to make August filled with brighter colors and hugs instead of desperation and tears in the shower. I’ll see Miami in the winter, after all.
I will take my heart back to nature, and breathe in oxygen. I will make the best of this Time Turned Fragile. Breathe in, breathe out. Breathe in, breathe out.
A blog is supposed to be some place where one can express any thought otherwise left behind in a world of hours, minutes, and seconds…a thought that would otherwise get caught between words and actions and chaos; caught between tears and distractions; between the 30 seconds of a flashy commercial and the bold print of your ex-boyfriend’s name glaring at you through the vibrating phone on your bed.
This is the last day that I’ll ever be a “kid”. Well, no…not really. But in the legal sense, I guess. 8 and 9 pass by…and then you’re excited to be 10. Double digits, naturally. Then come the pre-teen or “tween” years and you’re as spoiled and selfish as you’ll ever be—hopefully. Then…you turn 13 and you’re a teenager. A real, authentic teenager complete with a menstrual cycle, training bras, and razors. Before you know it, you’re 15. “And when you’re fifteen, and somebody tells you they love you, you’re gonna believe it.” Taylor Swift got that one right.
And then after 15 comes 16 along with her baggage filled with much exposure to sex, drugs, and rock n’ roll.
And after 16 comes 17. Seventeen.
The most glorified year of them all. The one where Jesse Tuck and Edward Cullen stopped aging. The number that has so many song titles dedicated to her, along with many lyrics about a “17 year old”. From The Beatles, to Metro Station, to Prince, to The Cure, to The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus, to Kid Rock, to the Smashing Pumpkins, to ABBA, to Queen, to 3 Doors Down, to many, many, more—they all wanted to talk about 17.
Seventeen: “the least random number.”
Every birthday I’m happy to be one more year closer to…..17.
Seventeen came with discovery; a journey of sorts through my own being. But it was an unconscious journey—a journey not made up of deliberate thoughts and rituals, but of time. Time passes by….day by day…and you find a new person in the reflection of your bathroom mirror. One with more focus, determination, and ambition. And you wonder where the hell she came from.
Today marks the day of my eighteenth birthday. I wasn’t born until later on in the day, so I’m still technically seventeen years old. And it feels weird writing from almost in between. I look around my room and see what is now invisible: size 2 jeans, phone calls made in the privacy of my closet in hushed tones, wet paint against construction paper, laughter in the middle of the night between the “shhh!” from my parent’s room, pillows muffling the sound of my sobs against the floor, and other memories that will forever be imprinted somewhere very deep inside of me.
So as I begin the wonderful journey of blogging, I also end the essential journey of childhood. Albeit I still have much to learn, experience, and grow, in numbers I have left my “innocence” behind.
I begin a new life by blogging. I begin a new life when I step off the plane in Milwaukee, Wisconsin to start my college days after 10 years of living in Miami, Florida. I began a new life in the middle of a Coldplay song after my mom walked into my room 3 seconds ago with my phone in her hand lighting up. I said “Oh, I left my phone in your room…and it’s my birthday.” And she started sobbing on my shoulder.
I end a life and begin a new one. So to Death and All His Friends, goodnight. In the morning, I will wake up with open arms to embrace the beginning of my life as an eighteen year old and all it has to offer.
