Birthdays

I cannot remember my 45th. It was the first birthday away from the place I'd called home for 30 years. I am sure there was some festivity, but I do not recall. My 46th was spent alone. Inner turmoil had started to spill out, while my physical state had deteriorated to the point that walking, even from bed to the bathroom, was a chore. A change of scenery, a recent life-changing surgery, and my 47th would be spent with a longtime friend. It was also the first time I shared a drink with another in quite some time. I hobbled to a waterfall, sat at a bar, even lounged in a hot tub shortly after. Again with my 48th, a new locale. A more festive time, but a summer of lounging, scraping by, reading, movies, and surrounded by solitude. My year would change within the next six months, and within a year, my 49th would approach. A relaxing time with another, but the ever-present knowledge that all that I've known over the last two and a half years would be changing. For a few days I could forget that this time, I had the burden of finding a job, if even for a few weeks until my other ones started. I have to find a new place to live but have no money for the first and/or last and security. I keep telling myself it will work out, it has in the past, whether because of good fortune or perseverance, but I'm tired. These years have sapped the energy to keep plodding along, getting by. I'm happy with my nothing, but my nothing is more than most have. The three keys, food, shelter, and security are present now, but one is quickly vanishing. Next year will be 50. Something I've long joked about would be my last. I was young and dumb back then, not realizing the seriousness of my joke, and in a bit of an ironic twist, something I've taken great pains to reach out to others about. But it's my 50th and with 360 days to go, I do not know where I'll be living, whether I'll still be working at the familiar place I've called my job for two years, or even where I will be. Will this be the year I leave NY, or at the very least this area I've called home for five years? It's funny. I've lived here for five and in Westchester for twenty-nine, but neither ever felt like home. I was always the outcast, no matter how many people I called friends. Brooklyn has and will always be my home. Wolfeboro, New Hampshire, despite only spending four summers there, twenty to twenty-three years ago, will always be my home. Alna, Maine, the tiny house, where I spent summers when times were different, will always be my home. Home has never been about the location, but about being surrounded by love and being able to reciprocate that love. Maybe that's why, without any disrespect to those who struggle with this literally, I've felt homeless for the past 15 years. It will soon be the anniversary of my mother's death. Thirty Percent of my life will have been spent without her and since her death, I have felt as though every house I've ever walked into is empty. Death truly is a part of life, but it takes from our lives. For each of us, it takes differently. For some, grief comes, then goes, or comes and goes, but for me, it took the feeling of home. If she were alive, no matter where I was, where she was would be my home. I'm going to be 50 soon and I want more for my cat, Swag, than I want for me. In my last few weeks here, I have promised him as much time outside as he craves and that I can give him. I'll feel such guilt when I take that away from him. For he too knows where his food comes from, that he has shelter, and security, but what separates him from me, is that he knows that he can explore the world and always come back and be surrounded by love. So he wants to come back, each and every day. I miss that. I crave that!