Yeah, so I just celebrated yet another birthday. Which I have to admit, is way better than being dead. But sometimes I am just so damn shocked at how old I am, and what I see in the mirror---mostly because it has absolutely nothing to do with how I feel on the inside.
Take Saturday, for example. My b-day present to myself was a surfing lesson with my dear friend Lottie. In a small Mexican village so far from my normal reality, I was able to completely believe I was still the girl I once was--strong, lean, innocent (ish), unmarked by time or life's worries.
And I had so much fun it should probably be illegal.
I got up on the board and rode the waves a handful of times. I paddled like my life depended on it. I was, in my mind, the coolest kid on the block sitting there on my longboard out at sea, waiting for the right wave to come my way. I was young, free, capable of anything. All my life was still ahead of me, at my feet, waiting for me to do with it as I pleased.
I see the pictures of that day now, and reality is nothing like I imagined it. Captured riding that last wave, which by now has achieved mythical proportions in my head, I do not look quite as cool as I would've hoped. In fact, I look very much like who I am today...a however-old mom whose body is not quite what it used to be...riding the board a little too far back...telltale lines around my eyes and wide grin.
In my mind's eye, however, I will forever be young and beautiful and strong and desirable on that day, surfing, paddling, getting tossed about the sea. And then afterwards, sitting under an umbrella, drinking a Corona, trading concert and tattoo stories with our sweet surfing instructor. I am the balls, I kick ass, I am super-hot.
I think I will disregard the photos and stick with what the camera in my mind tells me--because days like those don't come around often and the feelings it elicited are so freaking magical.
Someone once told me that in print and in person, I sound like a teenager trapped in a mom's body. I think it was meant as a slam, but I took it a as a compliment. I even had a t-shirt made with the slogan blaring from my chest. Because as long as I can hang on to my youth--even if it is only in my heart--I know I can keep having moments like my birthday.
In the Breakfast Club, I think it was the Basket Case who said, "When you grow up, your heart dies. You can't help it." But I am here to say, I simply refuse to grow up and have my heart die. I will keep fighting the fight forever. So even when I am (really) old and gray, I know deep down inside I will always be the girl I once was.
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