on a lighter note

I seem to vaguely remember pulling a few grey hairs out of my head in the time before I came here. Every now and then the light in the bathroom would catch a particularly shiny, awkwardly placed hair sticking out of the top of my head. I would quick draw my tweezers and in a flash of vanity, it would be no more.

Today I returned to my house after a particularly tiring and frustrating day. All I wanted to do was wash the grime of the city off my face. I removed my hat and leaned over the sink in eager anticipation for that refreshing splash of water. As I flipped the faucet, a dry dusty sound was all that greeted me. No water. In exasperation I looked up to see a complex network of grey hairs running across the top of my head. Like the interstate highway system, my head is now riddled with winding, nonsensical streaks of grey. When did this happen?

I am going to be 25 next week. Sounds pretty young, huh? I can’t believe that I arrived here with just 23 years to my name. Two short years later I am still boasting small numbers, but I feel that I have aged in ways that I cannot even begin to name. There are always the physically manifested signs of aging. I will return with my new network of shiny grey hair, the many wrinkles around my eyes and sprinkling my face with signs of “wisdom” and “experience,” back pain, unexplained yet frequent weight changes and the marks of the sun splattered across my arms and shoulders… to name a few. However, age cannot be measured in numbers or in physical changes. It is experience that really marks age. There is something about stepping outside of a comfort zone that exposes life in its most raw a true forms. Birth, life, love, pain, grief, death, grading… all of these have aged me.