63.

Today marks 63 trips around the sun for me. Honestly, I never thought I'd make it this long.

With friends dropping around me in the 80s and 90s, I often questioned whether or not I'd make it. I mean, my sexual history was anything but pristine, so my continued survival was not a given all things considered.

"And yet, she persisted."

When I was in first grade, one night before I fell asleep I figured out how old I'd be in the year 2000. (My math skills were next to non existent at the time so I just counted off the years and my corresponding age.) When I arrived at the answer it seemed so old. As I grew, 2000—with visions of moon bases and manned missions to Jupiter always dancing in my head—always seemed so far off.

When 2000 dawned, I remember walking down Market Street on the way to work on New Year's Day (because computers were expected to crash across the planet with the coming of the new year) and I thought, "So…this is what 2000 looks like. Not much different from 1999—or any other year for that matter.

What came after that imagined future I couldn't even begin to comprehend if someone had told me. Cancer came out of left field three years later, but I had no doubt I would beat it into remission, and I did. My most recent PET scan a couple months ago remains all clear.

But now that we're 21 years beyond 2000 I know that after everything the world has been through, this is not anything I could've remotely imagined; much less that there still would be no moon bases or manned missions to Jupiter—and that we'd still be dealing with the same racial crap we were in the 1960s.

The funny thing is, I now have this feeling that something—something big—is about to happen. Maybe it's only because of all the shit Ben and I have gone through over the past six months and it's the post-traumatic "waiting for the other shoe to drop" sensation. But is it going to be something good or bad? That's unclear. All I know is as I enter my sixty-fourth year on this planet, we're all due for something amazingly good to happen, both personally and collectively.