Although I clown them & roll my eyes as they are telling me so, I real life do understand my 17–22-year-old students who fret about aging. Although I tell them they have a whole life ahead of them, that they’re still too young to be thinking so far ahead, that they are where they’re supposed to be w/in this universe, I really do know that feeling of not having done enuf or been enuf or gotten enuf or given enuf as a human being socially driven against time & each other—of being socially driven against the very nature of our humanness. I really do know the sadness, the fear, the inadequacies, the perplexities & wonderings my coming-to-age students encounter as they come to age during (often flailing through) their college tenure. I see them as I see thru all the communications technologies insisting I look at my peers seemingly doing, being, getting, giving, having, moving, movingmovingmoving, moving into a life they’ve imagined. All that looking is exhausting; my looking as I just be in the world, places me in a slump—a contemplative posture, though, regarding my purpose & desire. Frfr, all that looking outward boomerangs me inward, usually situating me in a melancholic quandary that deepens during my birthday.

I am 45 years old tomorrow, August 23. I was born in 1979—the year San Quentin’s Black Guerilla Family cemented Black August commemorating the deaths of activist brothers Jonathan and George Jackson; the year Arthur McDuffie, Black insurance salesmen & US Marine stopped for a traffic violation, was murdered by four Miami-Dade county police officers; & the year five Greensboro, North Carolina members of the Communist Workers Party were murdered by klansmen & neo-nazis during a “Death to the Klan” rally. 1979 was also the year McDonalds introduced its Happy Meal. 45 years ago, I was born, like each of us are, into an extraordinary exteriority that threatens my pleasure the more I age. I feel for for my 17–22-year-old students who already know such displeasure. (I wonder if they are as melancholic as I am on my birthday, or is their turn up momentarily deafening?)

We human beings are expected to be a particular kind of happy on our birthdays and to express these (manufactured) birthdays like we routinely express good mornings. But as I age into an adulthood nearing a half century, I find myself wanting to reside in an interiority where, says Kevin Quashie, I can be quiet—where I can make sense of (even peace with) all this life:

“Quiet helps us to understand the activism involved in being aware, in paying attention, in considering. So much of how we make sense of the world is through social identities, as well as through a discourse of cause and effect: this happens because of that, this produces that. Sometimes these firm logics undermine the opportunity to be in wonder at what is happening to you as well as to be aware that you ‘happen to the world’” (Quashie, The Sovereignty of Quiet, 2012, p. 72).

I’ve been spending the last few months, namely as a 44-year-old Black lesbian woman professor, poet, & essayist; daughter, sister, & friend, thinking about how I “happen to the world.” While I know I have happened to the world by my mere existence, how I happen to the world, like mattering to it & it to me, begs my attention—a consideration beyond baked goods, bashes, balloons, & boxed nothings, par for the course re: birthdays.

Admittedly, as my birthdays advance me, they bring me closer to death—of myself, of my loved ones, of unfulfilled dreams & childhood yesteryears mirroring Lauryn Hill’s New Jerusalem. Celebratory birthday gestures intended to solicit my happiness, therefore, encroach upon my most authentic feelings of gravity, (which I know, I, too, commit unto others). & maybe birthday whatevers, like Christmas, are socially constructed to do just that—distract us from thinking intimately about the year we have had, that has happened to us, as we move (read: birth ourselves) into yet, another year, to happen.)

Since aging into the 40s though, I just be wantin to go inside on my birthday—to explore that humanity of mine that gets caught up in an exteriority that makes me sad, angry, wanting. That detaches me from my Self.

I want to go inside, & I want to stay there in my quietude until I am gifted a presence that lasts long enuf. Frfr, I want omnipresence to hold me like my sports bra—so I ain’t dangling, susceptible. I don’t want to be afraid, to feel sad, to fight through, to long for too long. On birthdays, I want the security of a divined self. To know & feel, frfr, an everlasting life. I want a rock steady presence where joy comes in the mourning & birthdays are everydays I am happening in & to the world again & again & again. That would make me happy—a birth day.