One of them is New Year's Eve. I don't know quite when it started, or why, but for at least the last five years or better I've gone out of my way to ensure adventure on NYE. It doesn't need to be anything specific and in fact, it doesn't necessarily need to be a party at all -- just as long as I am getting into some type of adventure in the last hours of the year.
This past New Year's, obviously, I was in London. Check and check. Adventure = sorted. The complex, I imagine, has everything to do with NYE setting the tone for the year to come. I figure if I'm having an adventure that night, it'll set a tone of adventure for the next 365 days.
My second complex is a recent discovery. My birthday.
Now, I know a shitton of people have complexes about their birthdays, because they have complexes about growing older. But I don't think that's really my thing, so much. I mean, sure. I'm turning 25 on Monday. I'm not supremely used to the idea just yet. Part of me feels like I'm woefully behind at life, in general, and part of me still feels like the springiest of spring chickens. Ultimately, I won't feel different when I wake up on the morning of the 15th.
No, I think my birthday complex is almost identical to my NYE complex. That day sets the tone for the rest of the year I will spend reciting that age as my own. On the first day I was 24, I got a mani/pedi with my best friend, ate Crumbs cupcakes and danced and flirted with middle aged British dudes for Patron shots at Cafe Wha?. And 24, not surprisingly, suited me pretty damn well.
This year I have a million big crazy adventurous plans surrounding my birthday. It is the big quarter-century, after all. On Friday I'm seeing a concert with Mr. Risky Business. Saturday I'm having a two-story birthday party with Megan (my upstairs neighbor), where there will be a keg and I will fulfill a lifelong dream of
Only, y'all. The complex. It will NOT go away. It is all up in my ear, talking trash about how my birthday is going to be SOOO boring and I might as well just eat the rest of those thin mints and then write that strongly worded letter to the Girl Scouts of America about how they are contributing to our national obesity epidemic because THAT would be more exciting than what I have planned. Because what do I have planned, on my actual birthday? WORK.
And it occured to me the other day that this will be the very first time in my life, ever, when I've had to work on my birthday. And yes, I'm going to my folks' for dinner and yes, my dad is making me his incredible barbeque shrimp. But I'm a grown-ass woman, as the kids say, and my mom and I are taking a big expensive trip. So there are no presents to open, no fanfare. No cake, no candles. (Although please let me ASSURE you that my parents will sing, and we can only hope that my mother will regale me with her always killer rendition of 50 Cent's "In Da Club." What would be March 15 if I couldn't hear a white Southern lady sing, "Go shorty! It's your birthday!")
So I've been wrestling with the complex all day today. And trying to decide if I should take a vacation day so I can sleep in and do morning yoga and get a pedicure and think up things to do that require the presentation of ID so people will be forced to acknowledge that TODAY IS MY DAY GODDAMMIT.
And mostly the big thing keeping me from just goin' on and doing it, sending my boss an e-mail and sealing the three-day-weekend deal, is that even if I did have that day off, and the injustice of having to work on my birthday was corrected, I wouldn't have anyone to play with me. Because it would still, in the regular-ass world, be just another regular-ass Monday.
And I may not have decided on the vacation day just yet, but I can tell you one thing -- whatever it takes, I will be sure that in my world? It is NOT just another regular-ass Monday.
cheers,
elizabeth
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