Golden

I wasn’t supposed to be here.

Which is another way of saying when I was born, tiny and screaming with a head full of dark hair, I was given an expiration date of 25 years.

There are few adults living with the condition that predated my need for a transplant, fewer still who were successfully transplanted with the disease and are still alive to talk about it. I can count us on my fingers, and I imagine if we were all gathered in the same room, we’d exchange knowing glances and hushed conversation. It’s like we know a secret. We were supposed to be dead, all of us, but we aren’t. We know what it’s like to live suspended between life and death, indefinitely. And we are the ones the new parents with tiny babes just diagnosed look at to figure out where to go. The parents my parents used to be. I’m the person I never thought I’d be.

27 years ago, on the 27th of November, I came into the world with every bit of that fiery sagittarius energy, and this year I have the privilege of celebrating my golden birthday.

It reminds me of Kintsugi, or the Japanese art form of repairing broken things with gold. It highlights or enhances the “imperfections” in a piece, making it even more valuable in the process. It is the metaphor of my life.

This past weekend, my husband and I got dressed up and kicked off my birthday weekend with his work Christmas party. We stayed at a hotel, ate delicious food, and when I was remarking later about not remembering a better birthday I meant it. It was the first birthday where I slept through the night (which I didn’t for the first 23 years of life, when I maintained levels of sleeplessness that warranted a diagnosis of clinical insanity), and I wasn’t in the hospital (every birthday post transplant.)

We ate good food and laughed and at the end of the night there was a dance. Ask me what I love and I’ll tell you I love to dance. I wore this burgundy dress with tiny strips all the way up the bottom and along the arms that spun out when I twirled, and I danced until my feet hurt and I was out of breath. For a while I was the only person on the dance floor, which didn’t bother me. I danced by myself, with Cody, with his work colleagues, some of whom I’d already met and some who I hadn’t. And at one point in the evening, while I was dancing, a woman I’d never met came over to where I was dancing.

“I see you,” She said, placing her hand on my shoulder. And I smiled.

All my life I’ve been terrified to be that person dancing alone. Scared of drawing attention to myself, of shining too bright. I learned playing it small meant staying safe, and I squeezed myself into tiny little boxes. But something about dancing alone, it made me realize something.

The majority of people at that party probably couldn’t have cared less about what I was doing, and the people who did notice me saw me. They saw someone lit up and authentic and alive, who was having fun. Life is made for living. And this life is one I wasn’t sure I’d get.

Do you know what happens when something that was broken and has been repaired comes out of the dark and is exposed to the light? It shines. It’s golden.