Someplace Like Home |n.j

18.

It's my birthday today.

I'm twenty six now.

What does twenty six feel like? I sat up from the bed and blocked the sun from my eyes. The world is extra silent today. It didn't seem to want to greet me as much as other days. Or was it my unwillingness to wake up and to accept the day?

Still, I slip off the bed and make my way into the bathroom. I look at my reflection in the stained mirror. He looks a little pitiful today. Those black roots are grown out now. The rest of the grey dye that's still there is no longer as vibrant as it was before. It looks dull, and a little dead.

Is my life worth twenty-six years?

I run a hand over my face, then squeezed a pinch of toothpaste onto the worn out bristles of my toothbrush.

I grew up around an average family. My mother has always been controlling and intimating. There is nothing warm about my family. My loyalty to them isn't a result of love, but a responsibility. I did grow up envious of other children's relationships with their parents, but that's nothing you can tell from a family portrait. We were at least, picture-perfect. Both parents were present, and we had one son, one daughter. I know that's enough to be grateful for these days.

After setting the toothbrush, I stuffed it in my mouth and began scrubbing. The roof hasn't come up yet. Today really isn't so special.

I went to average schools too, had occasionally average friends—setting aside Hoseok. I even had an average girlfriend at one point, our relationship was average too. I liked her, but I don't think I ever loved her. It was one of those things that just happened without much thought. And then I had a not-so-average job, according to my mother. It's difficult to have a social life when everybody else is working while you're not, and when you're working, well, most of them are sleeping.

Is it bad that I can so easily sum up my life with a few simple phrases? What are other people my age living like? What have they achieved by now? If the rest of my life is just as average, I could live to at least seventy-something, and if I'm lucky, even eighty. That leaves me with about forty years left. I'm already past one-third down the road. I could die tomorrow, for all I know. And what have I accomplished? I've never been one to think of life as a race, or value it by any sort of standard. I stand by the belief that there's only being and not being. There's nothing less to living, and also nothing more. But still, today makes me think-no matter how pointless it is to.

I spit out the toothpaste and bend down to rinse my face out with the water gathering in my palms.

Do people my age still throw birthday parties? I wouldn't know. I've been celebrating the same way for the past few years-just a drink with Hoseok. It's good, I don't have to blow my money on some party venue, or please a crowd on my own birthday, and I don't have to pretend I'm having extra fun just so people won't feel like they're wasting their time. I just have to sit down and talk to someone that gets me.

Birthdays really don't mean much, the only difference is between remembering and not remembering. If I forgot to check the calendar last night, today wouldn't feel any different. But I remembered to, anyway. And now I feel so different. It's good to be sentimental sometimes, right? I guess it does serve some purpose. I wouldn't be thinking about my life this morning if it really was so insignificant.

I dry my face with the cloth on the rack and head back to my bed, where I found my phone buzzing. I unplugged the charger and checked the notifications.

Hoseok
how should we celebrate it this year?

Hoseok
please don't tell me we're settling with cheap beer again