Reflections at 25

If my subconscious could speak, it would probably say this:

Happy birthday! Congratulations! You are now a quarter of a century old. Congratulations for making it through another year. Congratulations on your three high distinctions and 6.75 GPA. Congratulations for not failing. Congratulations for not hurting anyone this year. Congratulations for not living in a twenty-seven storey apartment. Don't you wish you did though sometimes? Don't you miss living alone? Being left alone? Don't you miss that great big window over the city - night lights illuminating everything in sight but that beneath? Feet dangling in the open air, just one step, just one push. Don't you wish you could relive that moment and do things differently? Take a leap of faith instead of picking up that phone. Don't you wish you could repeat all those moments of mistake? No. Don't go. Stay. I love you. What is it like to carry the world on your shoulders? What is it like on every birthday, every Christmas, every New Years Eve to feel a gaping expanse in your heart where her hand should be, connecting you to all of the things that are right in the world? What is it like to never feel content or forgiven, to ache from the emptiness that you created, to wish to rewind time to right the impossible? Today will be filled with meaningless congratulations. Only twenty-five years passed, and still a lifetime remaining.