Twenty-eight & more

Tomorrow, I will celebrate my 28th birthday.

Twenty-eight. Sometimes, it feels surreal to say it. But when uttered, it sounds small and nothing, but thinking about the amount of experience—tears, heartbreaks, and downfall—that comes with it, a number wouldn’t suffice.

Between one to twenty-eight, I’ve lived a thousand faces, worn a hundred emotions, and loved people and things a million times over. I carry billions of moments, from the moment I sighed my first breath into this world to this day, experiencing a spectrum of birth and rebirth.

I’ve experienced several deaths: loved ones and my being. Looking back, I wasn’t just one person. Personas have died to become who I am now—to become twenty-eight. I was an insecure girl, shadowed by noises and stories that people tell, who hated every fiber of her body. She slept with questions of why she was who she was, without knowing who she could become. I was a naïve teenager, full of rage and confusion, unaware of how the world works. She passed day by day without any thought of why and how. I was a student who started to fall in love with the beauty of words and colors. She found a new world outside her realm, how silence can be flamboyantly out of this world. Books were her solace. Colors, lines, and curves were her expression. Then, I became a young woman consumed with love, passion, and emotions. She found comfort in sleek glances and validating touches, found in between the high and low of alcohol and night lights. She was yet to know: the most satisfying look she’d ever get would be from her own reflection.

And there, this woman who I am now. Someone who doesn’t know how to describe herself when asked, but someone who finally loves herself. Someone who looks in the mirror and is in love with what she sees and who she is.

All of them died and were reborn into a new one. They all died to become that woman I am now: twenty-eight and ready to live more lives.