On Turning Twenty-Four

Twenty-Four. What is there to say about it? (This is where I pause and let the Old Lady put in her two cents.)
...

(And I guess this where I realize, after a few moments of silence, that she has left me to fend for myself. I guess it is my fault. I never listened to her anyway. I’ll miss you, ya ol bag.)

And so it is. You can’t just take the people you love for granted and expect them to stick around forever. If they truly do love you they will try, probably for years, but there will come a time when they have to move on, because you are no longer good for them.

Twenty-Four. Eh. You know how I think you can tell you are leading a good life? If you aren’t completely bummed on your birthday. My first instinct every January 13th is that everyone is depressed on their birthday, but there has to be plenty of people out there who look forward to the future and can leave the past in the past. They look forward to moving on. They aren't scared. I believe these are the happy ones.

In the story I am currently working on the main character, Johnny, seems to sum up the unhappy ones:

“Think about it. Your whole life you want to be sixteen, then you want to be eighteen, then you desperately need to turn twenty-one, but after being twenty-one for a while you want to be seven again, because now you don’t really have anything to look forward to until you are sixty-five and can retire, and no one wants to think about that. You don’t care that you couldn’t drive, live on your own, or drink. You just want to play hide-n-seek. We realize that are seven year old selves were a lot happier than we are and all we want to do is go back, but since we know that is impossible we just try to keep from going forward. And so we fill our lives with events that are full of empty calories in an attempt not to grow, and we starve.”

Am I better off then when I was twenty-three? Not even close. Much worse in fact. Despite all efforts and decisions made in an attempt not to grow, I turned twenty-four anyway. Huh. I wish I could say that I saw that one coming.