Trading In My Fake ID

For a girl who's spent her life being told she's an old soul stuck in a body too young to enter the room, 21 was long-awaited.

I kicked it off with the Witch of Dallas.

She's a massage therapist with serious intuitive capabilities. Two years ago, she pointed me toward a jade bracelet a full month before I'd be diagnosed with fluid on the brain. Jade balances body fluids and rebinds skeletal and cellular systems and heals stitches. And yes, the surgery that followed gave me my first stitches.

I went back carrying trepidation. Sometimes not knowing is what lets life unfold naturally. But a friend of mine had just walked out of her own session with the Witch with life-changing news, and I thought, that could be nice.

I had silenced my phone before my session started. I am sure of this. Still, somewhere around minute four, it began dinging every five seconds. Then every three.

I was mid-internal debate about whether to ask her to silence it. Embarrassed by the ringer but unwilling to inconvenience the woman working on me. I've been told recently by everyone I turn to that I could use practice with the muscle of speaking up for myself. You know, reacting in the moment instead of decoding it later. Talking to a situation instead of about it.

The second I finally asked, her fully-charged speaker shut off mid-song.

We both started laughing. Message received.

The rest of the reading went like this. My recent obsession with adding mushrooms to everything I cook has actually been good for my gut and life. Stay rooted, I guess. And then, in the same breath: Does 13 and yang mean anything to you?

Well, yes. Mr. International's real name is a Portuguese combination of sun god and yang. He was born on my half-birthday, November 13. There are 13 years between us (lol). I was born on Friday the 13th. My first order in Barcelona was number 13. I once arrived early to that same city, by accident, on January 13. My birthday was the next day: May 13.

She rolled up her sleeve and showed me a tattoo: the number 13 inside the outline of Texas. And she said she kept having visions of turtles, whose shells have thirteen plates, and Mary Magdalene, who's notoriously connected to the number.

Divine timing, she said. Trust your luck.

However, the most important phrase she said was you need to find your "sacred rage," knowing when to tell people to fuck off and learn to give less accessibility away (also her read on the phone ringer interference).

That morning, I had slept through my alarm for the first time in months and nearly missed a government appointment for my internship paperwork. I called the office in a panic. They gave me one hour. I picked a random moment within that window, and grabbed the door handle at the exact same second as another woman doing the same thing.

We had to give our birthdays at the desk. Hers was 5/20/88. The clerk, who had just finished giving me a hard time for being late, looked up and said, Welcome, fellow Taurus, my birthday's tomorrow. I forgot my tail was supposed to be between my legs. I screamed, No way, mine too.

Then it clicked. 5/20 is the birthday of the friend who sent me to the Witch. That friend has been letting me use her ID, so it is also my fake ID birthday. In a time window I didn't engineer, at a moment I picked at random, I walked into a room with three Tauruses, one with my real birthday, and the other my fake one.

If I had to describe what turning 21 felt like in one image, that might be it.

My only intention for the eve of my 21st was harmony. The big party was the next day. I just wanted to watch the clock hit midnight with the people I love most. When small ruptures started moving through the group, I felt my plan slipping. By 11:57 p.m., I could barely speak. My friends turned to me and asked, "What do you want to do for your birthday?" I had nothing.

Three minutes later, they had hijacked the karaoke bar and queued "In Da Club" so I could let out the sacred rage of you know we don't give a fuck, it's not your birthday.

And then I did something that made me proud.

I stepped into my 21st year with my real ID. I could keep the fake one, stay in la la land, scared to lose sight of perfect, scared to rupture the peace, unable to speak when things didn't go my way. Or I could show up real. Pull my friends into a circle. Thank them for turning the night around. Name what hurt. Let harmony flood back in.

I gave a little speech. Tonight I'm trading in my fake ID for my real one. I’m exercising my sacred rage.

It was perfectly imperfect, because I have friends I can be real around, and they can be real around me. The honeymoon stage is over. I've stepped off the pedestal. The stakes only get sharper from here, and I'm ready for real love.

The next morning, my actual birthday, I woke up to a text from Mr. International: after the rain comes the sun.

And, it was the most beautiful weather day. La Ballerine was on witch duty from Barcelona, conjuring perfect skies from afar. My roommates had decorated the apartment, cleaned everything, and written me a column. Birthday songs arrived in many languages from cities I've lived in and cities I've only visited. Love arrived from every corner of the world I'd built.

On my birthday eve, I had asked for harmony but couldn't receive it because I hadn't spoken it. This morning, I did not have to ask. Everyone had already conspired to hand it to me.

I think this is what growing up is.

My dad said that after your 21st birthday, your birthday becomes what you want it to be. For him, that’s why it's just a carrot cake.

Mine was the willingness to give up the version of myself that requires nothing in order to stay liked, in exchange for the version that says what it wants and finds out, terrifyingly, that the people who love you can actually hear it. And it was extra sweet because it involved me proudly still relying on people, not just cake.

For a true 21st, I overindulged. My friends had created a night where the only thing I needed to focus on was having fun, and I did.

I will spare the details. What I will not spare is the punchline.

By the time I got home, I was incapable of remembering something as simple as my phone passcode. Locked out for an hour. Sat on the couch in my apartment lobby, so close to home and so far from it. The phone offered one option.

Emergency call only.

911, what's your emergency?

I no longer have a fake ID, just a real one. I am leaving my magic bubble. I am growing up.

Can you help me?