On the final day of my strongest decade yet, I was hung over. It seems fitting that I ended my twenties like I spent the majority of them – sitting in bed, eating bacon and eggs, trying not to dry heave, drinking water and I waiting for the sweet release of death to come. Death didn’t take me into the great beyond. Instead, I just marinated in my sins and transgressions and waited for the clock to strike midnight.

The sins of my twenties were bountiful, as they should be. Those years were filled with questionable decisions. Some of these decisions were so blatantly dumb that I feel like evolution should have picked me off.  But regret isn’t an option when looking back, because if I didn’t have those moments, then learning what not to do would be more difficult and I think I would have been letting youth and myself down. Youth carries a staggering presence and with that comes the denial of consequence. Once those consequences start coming into reality then the gig is up. Some years ago I had one of those moments and I started to feel the weighted vest of actual life.

I have always tried to be self-aware and my analysis is frequently over the top, almost to a fault. But it wasn’t until the loss of my friend Janie that I began to actualize that life is fleeting. I hadn’t seen that writing on the wall. She was a beautiful young woman who died on her 20^th birthday in a tragic manner. I could feel the pain of loss in the marrow of my bones. I don’t know if I have ever cried so hard in my life. I cried not only for the loss of such a brilliant light on this planet and her family and friends, but I also wept because I knew, at that moment, that every cell in my body has an expiration date on it.  It may seem selfish, but that is what death does, it teaches. It is the grand mirror by which we should look at ourselves and what we do in this life.

Days, months and years have passed. Those moments and feelings from around the time of her death almost seem like scenes from a movie that I rented from Blockbuster when that was still a thing. I am not the same person as I was back then in many ways. I have a vastly different friends group around me for various reasons. I know now for certain that people die and friends change, and friends die and people change. Others have passed since then and it never gets easier. Life gathers more colors and shadows – it’s more dynamic now – after experiencing these harsh realities. I want all those dead folks back, but we can wish in one hand and shit in the other and see which one comes true. So, I have to go forward with something from their life and their death.

My thirties are here now and I can say that I’ve never been more excited to turn an age. The truth is I am just happy to be here. I am glad to have some experience under my belt.  I get to breathe oxygen. I live with ability to miss my Grandma and my friends Ricky and Chelsey. I get to drink a crisp gin and soda on a patio under the life giving star we happen to be traveling around.  But I guess the point is to try and change in a way that betters humanity and understand that death is just the artistry of evolution filling in the detail and bringing the canvas to life.