Extravagantly.

There are days when it feels like everything has been flecked with rose gold and hazel and honey. They are rare and they’re when I feel my heart in my throat and even sleep deprived and synapses slow, everything feels delicious.

Celebrating my birthday over the course of what feels like a lifetime of marvelous moments and dreamy fragments has reminded me of how immensely loved I am. It has been quite a while since a birthday has meant this much, has made me feel this extravagantly.

An ever so slight but highly charged difference as I enter this year is that I feel so charmed to be doing so, to have these next days, and to anticipate living through them deeply. To be in it and to expect everything gorgeous and thrilling and terrifying and teeth grindingly frustrating. Something in my marrow gives off slight vibrations saying you are here for a reason.

I sit in silence and separateness and it feels empty and still fulfilling. Snapshots of moments dart around my mind from a week past. The cool, cement wall of a building around the street corner from my hotel, rough against the back of my hand. The smell of burnt toast, wafting through my room this morning as I woke up next to best friends under crisp sheets and the air conditioner whirring quietly next to my head. The briny crush of roe on my tongue, washed down with a host of bubbles- dining with friends new and old, sharing stories of lives before babies, mortgages, and wedding bands. Whoops of glee as friends belted out songs during karaoke, unafraid in front of an audience surrounded by chilli flakes and parmesan. Glowing faces around a restaurant table, every inch covered in pizza and Aperol and bitter espresso and grasping hands. Dancing through the empty, damp streets skirting broken sidewalks, feeling very much alive with friends on every side. Black tee shirt, warm and broad and unexpected. Gushing laughter paired with expected tears reclining on friend’s sofa watching movies and sipping Cucumber sour beer.

A constant loop of strange and beautiful, the feelings of worry and fear and anger, questioning and desire, mirth and surprise still beam heavily: introspection at its strongest. I am brazenly happy. I am unsuitably blessed.

I am taking this, and I am running with it.