In about forty minutes I’ll turn twenty-three. It’s safe to say that a few things are going on right now that I probably could never have guessed would be happening in my life at this age:
- I’m a few months away from gaining dual citizenship, which I’ve inherited from the Italian immigrant side of my family. Sometimes I think I forget that. This process is so massive and time-consuming and since I’m paying someone to pretty much do it for me, most of the time I’m not really involved, so it is bizarrely easy to forget about. But happening it is, and at the end of this, I’ll have an Italian passport.
- I’ve started to go gray. Because I’ve spent the last four or five years being somewhat cruel to my hair (going from black to purpley-red to blonde to ginger to its current mutant shade), I have no idea how long this has been happening. The coverage is light but thorough. There are strands of it everywhere. This would seem crazy, but apparently citizenship isn’t the only thing I inherited from my Grandpa Policastri: he started to go gray before he hit twenty.
- Tomorrow is my first official day working at a cupcake shop that’s currently bumming me out by making me cover my tattoo in Ace bandages. For those of you that don’t know, my tattoo, I suppose, is highly offensive:
- I’m still months of savings away from accomplishing my current goals and being able to move on.
Life’s not exactly what I expected, but do you know what? I am happy. I have a lot of work to do, I have friends and family that need my love and support and that love and support me right back, and I have never been happier to be myself, because I am an awesome person. I got probably the sweetest voicemail I’ve ever gotten at midnight Eastern time from my best friend that goes to Cornell. I don’t think I will ever delete it.
I’m getting rambly and not making much sense, but essentially all I want to say is it’s nearly my birthday, I am going to be twenty-three, I’m not anything that the world tells you a twenty-three year old should be, but I don’t care. I am happy and I am proud of it.
