thirty-one

All the things I had been doing the last post were put to a complete stop (except for reading The Abarat) as I was struck down by a bad flu. So I spent my last days as a thirty year old in bed. This is perhaps the longest and most lucid I've been awake in the last two days and I'm biting my nails and waiting... for what? I don't know. For the rest of my life? Of course.

But if I knew that already, why am I biting my nails after the longest time that I've gotten over biting them?

I had a thought while in bed hours ago: I got a birthday wish. It wasn't a wish I made last year or even two years ago, I have to say it was a wish I made more than five years ago. I distinctly remember Kitch asking me, "What do you wish for?" and I said, "I want true love to find me." And I remember her smile and her breaking into the Indigo Girls song, "Love Will Come To You." That was a very long time ago.

While I've been involved in a few relationships, pseudo- and otherwise, since then, I realize that only today, only in bed with my runny nose and feeble muscle movement, does this thought come to me, that love has indeed come to me and I had gotten my birthday wish and I should be grateful.

I am grateful. Thank you.

I am also grateful for a lot of other things. For the fantastic past year of beautiful dancing. For my gorgeous friends and their love. For my family and their love, even if one of them shows his in a much gruffier way than I liked. For being taken care of in this universe.

I tried to teach ballet class today, but I discovered I was too weak to do so and sat out the class while Jacqui taught. One of the kids, a precocious child named Chloe, kept sidling up to me every chance she got. Chloe, because she is so talkative, gets my goat a lot of times - my mom always chides me that I should never make patol little children. I can't help it sometimes, though I agree with her, but tell me, how do you try to convince a kid that the Nutcracker is not Barbie, that it's a ballet? Sorry, just a frustration.

Anyway, Chloe was always telling me stuff like, "Teacher, are you in a mood again today?" when I tell her, "Chloe, stop talking." If you gave me a hundred bucks for every time I say that ("Chloe, stop talking!") in class, I'd be a rich woman by now.

So Chloe sidles up to me and successfully has time to tell me something. She says, "Still feeling sick, Teacher?" I try to smile and nod. She nods back and says, "You'll be okay, Teacher. You'll see."

I am grateful. Now I should pay it all back by trying more to become a better person, the kind of person who deserves all this love.

Happy birthday to me. ,)