On Turning 24
August 8th, 2022
There was a moment I had in the kitchen of my mom’s house past bedtime when I was maybe 10 or 11 years old. I vaguely remember telling myself in the glow of the stove night light that my promise for entering middle school was to be liked by everyone — antithetical to my social pitfalls of elementary school, and a way for me to start liking myself too.
A win-win.
The day before my 24th birthday, I was confronting some anxieties about growing older in a journal entry at a secluded region of a park, and was shortly interrupted by a man who felt safe to take his smoke break at the only other table next to me. He complimented the spot I picked as if I coordinated our date, asked if it was fine to smoke in the park (to which I lied and said “yeah, probably”), and then asked me if there were any [fine] bitches that hung around the park. We both agreed probably not.
He was born in Philly but recently moved to Raleigh from Florida. He has a 9 year old and a 6 year old, both sons, and he works at a country club. He saw me journaling and proclaimed he’s a poet himself. I declined a hit he offered me, and yet found myself inhaling the airborne spliff smoke, indulging in our conversation about racist holidays and truthseeking. I thought to ask his name but didn’t. We exchanged fist bumps and I awkwardly thanked him as he strided off, my journal entry still far from complete and my train of thought nowhere to be found. Awkward as it may be, I knew why I thanked him, and I like to think he knew why too.
The day after my 24th birthday, I came home to a flashbang of smiling teeth and balloons that left me stunned. The amount of love that greeted me in my living room was more than my younger self could have ever fathomed. I haven’t run out of thank you’s to everyone who shared that night with me.
Thirteen or fourteen years since the epiphany in the kitchen, I’ve concluded that the underlying intent of that self-promise was not to feel liked or loved by everyone, but to feel love from everyone and everywhere, in whatever way it is able to take shape. A passing “hello”. An exchange of compliments. A “thanks, take care”. A nod of acknowledgement. A stranger’s life story. A beam of sunlight right on my face. A merciful lesson. I wanted to learn all the ways I could call something “love”, so that I could be aware of its presence in my life as much as possible. My goal now is to refract love like a lens, redirect it, scatter it as far as I can. Showcase its evident abundance.
The day of my 24th birthday, I wrote a complete journal entry between 5:43am and 6:09am, addressed to myself. Here’s an excerpt:
July 8th, 2022
“I […] am so grateful to pilot the heart you have. […] you deserve to be here and live. You have and hold love here everyday. See you next year and the many years after that. Deep breaths.”
View the full slideshow from the party here!
by Tim Mensa
