My eyeglasses were larger than the ones I have now and they fit awkwardly on my face. My face was clean-shaven except for a thin mustache.
I was both outsider and insider then, just beginning to flex my social muscles. I hated the taste of beer so when I went to fraternity parties, I refused to drink. Instead, I danced to the live bands playing in the basement and watched others get smashed.
I was two hours from home, thrilled with the freedom I had, feeling like a semi-adult, away from Mom. I loved staying up until the wee hours of the night. Of course, I paid for it the next day, groggy-headed, eyelids heavy with the sleep I should have gotten the night before but didn't.
I knew then what I wanted to do, even if I didn't know how I was going to do it. I wanted to be a journalist, work for a big paper and do big stories. I wanted to write.
How was I to know how hard it would all be? College was hard enough, the pressure of keeping my grades up, the doubt that crept into my mind from time to time of whether I was good enough to be here, my immaturity at times that threatened the friendships I had forged.
But life outside? I had no idea until two years later when I graduated and had to move out on my own, rent an apartment, figure out the non-existent work-life balance, paying bills, all the real adult shit my Mom told me about but I never did until now.
And in the time between then and now, from 20 to a few days shy of 40, life has changed me and I have changed with it. I have hurt people I said I cared about and I have been hurt to the core by others. I have made mind-numbing mistakes. I lost a job I wasn't ready for and had to rebuild my crumbled self-esteem bit by bit. I have stumbled my way through relationships like some blindfolded fool who doesn't realize he could have taken the folds off at any time.
These days, the glasses are smaller and circular. Little strands of white bleed through my mostly black goatee and mustache. I am still thin but the flesh is flabbier in places. I enjoy a glass of red wine every now and then or a bottle of Corona with lime. I dance more and poetry seeps from nearly every pore of my body. I am the writer I always thought I could be, and I am not finished writing yet.
I found that getting to the places I dreamed about was harder than I ever imagined but the path I took led me to places I never would have imagined and to people I would never want to vanish from my life.
I know now that the hardest thing is to own your life, own all of it. You can't own half of it; you can't just remember the laughter and the joy and the sweet caresses of some long-lost girlfriend. You also have to remember the mistakes and the pain and the heartache. All of your life made you who you are. All of it.
The cracks of my skin make me beautiful.
In the past year, I've been thinking about what turning 40 will be like. I think about what the next 20 years will mean. And sometimes, I get scared. We all do. Because you can't predict what will happen. You can't see the next possible disaster around the corner. You also can't see the next bit of happiness around the corner.
But I figure that I'll own whatever comes next just as I've owned everything that has come before.
If I could tell my 20-year-old self anything, I would tell him, "You're built for this. You always were." And I feel that my 60-year-old self is reminding me of that at this very moment as I write this.
You were built for this. You always were. And you always will be.
