I’m 32 and I cry. Nothing special, I was 31 and I cried.
Tonight I’m crying from frustration. Last year of a broken heart.
Tears of disappointment, a night that doesn’t end the way I want it to, a life that seems to be going where it wants to.
I’m not sad about getting older, besides who realizes that they are getting older? Wrinkles in the hollows of the eyes, a body that may be less “firm” than before, but it is not in years that we see it… Just in periods.
I don’t know who invented the birthday, what an idea to count. Counting the time that has passed and in fact the time left to live.
My niece gave me 50 years, she has three, for her, fifty or thirty, she sees only a cloud of thousands of days ahead. Whereas for me… I thought 50 years… Whoo she’s abusing… then I realized what was it in 18 years… 18 years .. that’s fast. Too fast.
Where will I be in 18 years?
In my head I have Mylene age, I would not know how to count. I am neither mature nor juvenile. I can be whimsical, or skeptical, I can be fickle as well as faithful, I can be calm as well as elated. I am sixty on Monday and twelve on Tuesday.
I am not my age. My age doesn’t exist. And then, every year, a date, this date where I was born.
This date dictated by a calendar of 365 days, 52 weeks, 12 months comes and tells me “Look, Mymy, you’re getting old. Soon you won’t be able to do this, wear that, have children, you’ll have to grow up etc.”.
These counts that don’t make sense, 365… 365… Not 1000 or 100, 365… Why not 376 or 245! 12 months, 7 days, nothing makes sense, but that’s how it is. Because a powerful Roman decided to calculate everything like that, today I am 32 years old.
I’m 32 years old, and instead of going home frustrated because I didn’t sleep with my current lover, I should go home to an apartment or a house that I bought, I should go home to a man who loves me, who shares my life. Oh and then, if I really succeeded, I would get my children back too. Children that I nurture and cherish thanks to a top-notch career, without pitfalls, that keeps evolving in the right direction.
Except I’m 32, and I’m sitting here wondering if I’m filling my frustration with my womanizer, or letting it perish in my sleep. I’m 32 and living in a 20 M2, I’m 32 and starting a new career. I’m 32 and I’m more celibate than a priest. I’m 32 and still falling into the throes of emotional dependency. I’m 32, and finally, I may not check any of the boxes dictated by the happiness of a 32-year-old woman, but I feel happy.
Because tonight’s tears are just a drop in the bucket of smiles I am experiencing. Because I will never be 32, I will never look back on my life with regrets. Because I laugh, I cry, I get angry, I hug, I fuck, I drink, in short I live.
For all that, being 32 years old means nothing, except raising a glass for the umpteenth time.