Number theory.

My birthday's on Thursday, and yet I don't feel eighteen.
I never felt seventeen, either.

There's a dissociation between the numbers and me; I don't feel part of any of them anymore. It wasn't always this way; I remember the days before my early teenage birthdays, feeling a new number overtake me and gradually melt into my consciousness. I always knew my birthday was coming because I could feel the new number's warm breath on the back of my neck, inviting and yet strangely forceful, conveying the inevitability and the excitement of a brand new year. I absorbed it into my psyche, embracing it, feeling it slide perfectly into place against the contours of my spirit. I felt familiarity in my annual rebirth, because the number was already a part of me; it'd snuck up on me in the weeks before my birthday and carefully mimicked my mannerisms, my habits and preferences; the day it moved in for good, I was pleased to see it, but not surprised in the least.

Things are different now. I see eighteen, but I can't grasp it. It's somewhere else, somewhere I'm not, and though I know I'll take its name in four days, it will be in proxy, a simple formality. There is no excitement, no colorful blending of my soul with something new, and the loss is tangible. I wonder if it's part of growing up; will I be as detached the day before I turn twenty? Forty? I hope the numbers will rediscover me somewhere along the way. In the meantime, I'll watch them from my lonely distance, hoping that one day I will feel the breath behind my soul again and remember that I am changing.