What a fucking ride so far.
Roughly four weeks ago, the fourth of this month brought a gorgeous spring morning scented with cafe au laits and beignets, a stroll along the Mississippi River and another rotation around the Sun. For all intents and purposes, I am 40… again. (see “rounding up”). But if accuracy is the goal here, 37 would be the number.
As I’ve gotten older, particularly in my stretch of thirty-somethings, I’ve learned to take aging in doses of reflection, reassessments and resets. While this is no patented formula for successful “seasoning”, it’s seems to have held well the last few years.
You may or may not remember (and this may be the case for most), 2020 shat on my plans to celebrate in one of my favorite cities. (Honesty, this could have easily protected me from time and energy wasted, so I’ll keep the COVID-ruined-my-plans complaints minimum to none.) This year, though, reared the head of a new kind of normalcy, and I was, in all giddiness, able to reclaim the bayou birthday weekend I wanted and needed.
Refreshed, full of Black joy and in a perpetual energy of reclamation, I ended my festivities, not only in gratitude of time well spent and moments well spun, but also honoring the heart and head space I had chosen to enter at the top of the year. As I approached the airport, I took out my phone and, with tired eyes and masked face, recorded my reflective thoughts, not realizing this particular moment would be more than a collaged IG post. Looking back at this past month, it seemed to have served as a portal, one that instantaneously unlocked glimpses of what’s to come. A future in which not much as we collectively know it will ever change… yet, in which everything in my own sphere within this world will. While the last few weeks have shown how racism, inequality and a slew of other byproducts formed from systematic toxicity are too deeply rooted to budge, sadly in my lifetime, this lapse has also given glimmers into areas of my life that had, at one point or another, been hidden from hope… hindered by disbelief that success. love and freedom in varying forms were within my reach.
Not much will change.
So much will change.
As I stood in the Ace Hotel window that Resurrection Sunday morning, I thanked God for allowing me to see another year and commemorated the day with what has now become my customary birthday image: a flaunting of nothing but my God-given skin. My birth suit. My baring of self. My stripping away all former things that no longer serve. My exposing of beauty and not so. My naked truth. My acceptance of who I am in the moment, My positioning to embrace all those to come.
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Already entering warmer months, I see that 2021 has not tarried. In that same fashion, April has swiftly revealed that anything, or better yet, all things, in the most unexpected way, are possible. My best bet is to buckle up and hold on tight.
Reiterating the same simple sentiments as I did on video while departing my darling NOLA,
“I am blessed. I am grateful. And I look forward to what this next year holds in store for me”.