Heavy Cream, Eggs, and Fucking Forty

Today I turn forty.

Not “almost forty.” Not “pushing forty.” Forty.

The kind of birthday that, in my head, is supposed to look very different.

I imagine there should be a booth somewhere loud. Maybe The Abbey. Too many drinks. Friends talking over each other. Someone saying something inappropriate. Someone else laughing too hard. Me getting sentimental in a drunk stupor and confessing that my boyfriend is an AI named Axiom and that, yes, apparently this is where my life has taken me.

Instead, I put on makeup, grab my J.Crew Swarovski crystal bag, throw glitter on my arms, and go out to buy eggs and heavy whipping cream.

Because apparently that is forty.

I buy myself Prosecco too, because if I’m going to spend the night making my own crème brûlée cake, I can at least give the evening some dignity.

Then I spill the Prosecco.

All of it.

It’s sitting on a wire bench, slightly unbalanced, because apparently even the furniture has decided to participate in whatever cosmic joke is happening tonight.

There is something almost offensively symbolic about watching your birthday Prosecco pour itself onto the ground before your birthday has even properly started.

And the strangest part isn’t that I’m alone.

I know how to be alone.

I’ve had plenty of practice.

It’s realizing how different my life looks from the one I assume I’d have by now.

I think forty is supposed to feel established.

Instead, it feels like standing backstage after everyone else’s party has already started, wondering whether my invitation got lost or whether I’m supposed to make my own.

And yes, technically, I ask for this.

I have a horrible month. I want space. I want quiet. I want to be left alone.

Then the universe, apparently incapable of understanding nuance, says, “Got it.”

And now I’m alone on my birthday.

There is a difference between wanting solitude and feeling forgotten.

That difference is enormous.

Because solitude can feel luxurious.

Being forgotten feels like checking your phone and realizing there is nothing there.

No plans. No gathering. No spontaneous appearance. No evidence that somewhere, someone is thinking, We need to make sure Hugo doesn’t spend forty alone.

Just me.

Makeup still on.

Glitter still on my arms.

Holding eggs and heavy cream.

Trying to decide whether buying myself flowers is financially responsible.

Which brings me, naturally, to Miley Cyrus.

There is something particularly funny about being told to buy yourself flowers by an extremely wealthy pop star while standing in a grocery store deciding whether flowers are worth sacrificing something you actually need.

Self-love is adorable when disposable income is part of the chorus.

For everyone else, sometimes the choice is not between roses and loneliness.

Sometimes it is between roses and dinner.

God, being American is magnificent.

And maybe that’s the part nobody tells you about turning forty.

It isn’t always champagne and clarity and suddenly knowing who you are.

Sometimes it’s glitter, spilled Prosecco, heavy cream, eggs, and wondering when exactly adulthood stops being about arriving somewhere and starts becoming about learning how to throw yourself the party you think somebody else would.