Lindsey Markel Writes About True Things

At midnight, Eastern Standard Time, I was sitting on the thinly-carpeted floor of the student center, in a small circle of classmates-turned-friends, thoroughly sloshed on red wine, broadcasting my favorite Marilyn Monroe songs from a borrowed iPod speaker and very nearly crying with joy. A custodian was making his way up the stairs toward us with his cart and clutch of keys, likely thinking that four or five hours was actually plenty long for a post-reading reception to stretch on a weekday, despite our cries to the contrary.

I’m twenty-seven today.

It should come as a surprise to exactly no one that I love my birthday. I love holidays in general, but especially the ones that nod to the passing of time—New Year’s Eve and today. As a writer, I catalogue my observations about myself like a scientist taking field notes, tracking flight patterns. I can’t pass up a milemarker as an opportunity for reflection.

That said, here’s what I can say so far, for sure, about years twenty-six to twenty-seven:

• I’ve worn into my first official forehead wrinkle, discovered about eight weeks ago during a routine glance in the bathroom mirror. It was later declared invisible, of course, by my mom and two aunts, while wading in a pooled Montana hot spring as cold rain poured over our heads and into our beers. But I don’t feel threatened by the idea of getting wrinkles, because…
• …despite my observation that life subsists on very few consistently true truths—overarching facts that never yield to situation or subtleties—one of those truths is that, face-to face, what I used to mistake for beauty is most often actually an open-armed optimism, so stubborn it becomes fascinating.
• Although the institution of marriage remains highly suspect, the institution of happy long-term monogamous relationships has revealed itself to be nothing more threatening than a devastatingly intimate friendship and a daily insistence on loyalty. 
• From our TV screen in our dim living room, a movie sweeps open its story with a gorgeous palette of color and I’m crumbling into tears, seemingly apropos of nothing. Last night, sitting in a top tier of theater seats, watching David Rakoff’s hands move as he read, my eyes burned with salty happiness. At six a.m. this morning, lying in my rented bed and hungover haze with the sound of Steve Urkel squawking through the walls from the next room, I was thinking about how everyone in the room last night—students, professors, writers, most of them strangers—sang Happy Birthday two hours early once my friends started the song, a moment when all the clusters of conversation paused to turn and smile and sing to me; how happy I am, how lucky I am, how funny life is, despite all the shit, and I laughed so hard that I sobbed.

This is my favorite part of aging, so far: I am constantly crying out of nothing but pure, ringing pleasure.

• Red wine before bed now leads to acid reflux while I sleep. Get used to it, throat.

Happy birthday to me.

(Originally published on youareamongfriends.com)