A Not-So-Happy Birthday

On Wednesday afternoon, the day before my twenty-fifth birthday, my agent forwarded me three separate passes on my book that’s out on submission. Like virtually all the passes we’ve received thus far, the editors offered very little in the way of critiques; my book simply wasn’t “right” for them. One editor even described it as having “such an intriguing and timely set up,” only to add that she was struggling with selling realistic fiction at the moment and therefore wasn’t “committing” to new authors in the genre.

I could rant all day about the mind-boggling finicalness of the traditional publishing industry, but I’ve already written a post which encapsulates my various grievances with it. I include this anecdote merely because it seemed a fitting conclusion to my turbulent twenty-fourth year on this planet, a year that, like the 2024 Presidential Election, began with tentative promise only to quickly develop into outright disaster. Between significant health issues, stagnancy in my career, and the Orwellian political landscape, twenty-four was anything but smooth sailing. And if the first day of twenty-five is any indication of what the rest of the year has in store, then I’m bracing myself for more choppy waters and stormy skies.

I awoke yesterday feeling completely wiped out despite a good night’s sleep. I couldn’t sit up in bed without my pulse skyrocketing into the one-twenties, and my head felt heavy, my thoughts slow and thick like molasses. When I checked my phone, a string of birthday messages from members of my extended family lit up my lock screen; however, when I tried to read them, the tiny text bothered my eyes. Staring up at my dark ceiling–I was too out of sorts to open the window shade and let in the sunlight–I saw the day stretched out ahead of me, as vast and beige as a barren landscape.

In recent weeks, my POTS–a form of autonomic dysfunction characterized by lightheadedness and tachycardia–has been particularly bad in the mornings, making the early hours of the day a dizzying grind. My birthday was no exception–if anything, the morning of May 8th was exceptionally awful; it was almost ten o’clock by the time I finally staggered out of bed, and after choking down a measly breakfast of an English muffin and chai tea and trying, unsuccessfully, to write for twenty minutes, I was so depleted that I crawled right back beneath my disheveled covers.

I whiled away the next two hours with an audiobook–Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man–which was about the length of time my heart required to return to a semi-normal rate. At noon, I dragged myself back into the kitchen, where I ate a bunch of pickles–and drank some of the juice–before sitting down at my computer to take another stab at my current work-in-progress. This time, I was marginally more fruitful, painstakingly churning out a few paragraphs through the fog enshrouding my brain.

My mom returned home from her part-time job at a local farm around one o’clock, and half an hour later, my mama arrived from Connecticut, where she’s living while she closes out her final months at the health center. Having both my parents around greatly improved the afternoon–even if I spent a large chunk of it vegged out on their bed. We played our favorite game, Wingspan, which I won narrowly, and took a short walk in the cool, humid weather.

As I ambled down our new street, surrounded by greenery and chirping birds, my knees and hips aching as though I were seventy– not twenty-five, I couldn’t help but reflect on how much my life has changed in a relatively brief period. Just a year ago, I’d celebrated my birthday with a four-mile out-and-back hike at a state park followed by lunch at a favorite vegan restaurant: buffalo cauliflower wings and spicy kale salad with carrot cake for dessert. Activities that were so commonplace to my twenty-four-year-old self are inaccessible and enviable at twenty-five. What I’d give to be able to hike again or to eat cauliflower without my stomach throwing a tantrum.

(As much as I have a tendency to idealize the past, it’s worth noting that last year’s outing was far from perfect and that I was very wiped out upon returning home. Back then, I lacked awareness of my health issues and didn’t understand why sports and socializing made me so tired. I thought it was my fault, that I was doing something wrong, and only once I received a diagnosis was I able to stop blaming myself for my inability to keep up with others my age–and even those who were much older.)

Per my request, my mom made general tso’s tofu for dinner, which sat pretty well with my stomach. We then gathered in my parents’ bedroom to watch an old episode of Animal Planet–on VCR–in which my late-Lab, Tia, is featured giving birth to a litter of puppies for Guide Dogs of America. I also make my film debut in the episode, and seeing my adorable one-year-old self tottering around our old home in Pasadena brought on another bout of nostalgic yearning, for a return to a simpler, happier time than the one in which I’m living.

To say that this was one of my worst birthdays would be accurate, yet as I sat with my parents and cat, Chibi, on their bed, in our peaceful new home in Vermont, I felt a stirring of gratitude, for the invaluable gift of familial love and support. I don’t know what twenty-five holds for me, but I do know that whatever life throws my way, I won’t have to face it alone. As my mama wrote in her heartwarming card to me, “We are all in this together, and together we can take on this crazy world.”