24

I slept through most of my birthday. The phone wouldn't stop ringing and all I wanted to do was sleep. My Nokia has this lovely feature where I just have to turn my phone over and it automatically goes on silent, and I can go back to sleep. My twenty fourth birthday passed by faster than any birthday I remember. No alcohol, no constant stream of people and smiles and laughter and no blood loss. No feeling of something significant happening, of some sort of definite moment in time that I should pay close attention to because I'll want to be able to look back on it later. My twenty fourth birthday sort of meant nothing.

While my birthday was peaceful (and we've all agreed, even-numbered ages are so much better than odd numbers) I get the distinct feeling that I've talked myself into all sorts of things that will also mean nothing once inspected more closely. I'm alive, internet. The anaesthesia of constant text and fonts and symbols, all things you can't hold and feel and taste, is frightening. I'm alive, even if it doesn't seem like it. Even if I'm incapable of grief and am bound by a bloodless unfeeling rationale. Tonight I feel the need to remind you that I'm so very very alive.