33

The eternal age

Summer is very much here, just hiding behind the clouds. I’m grateful and drinking plenty of water, shaking off the hangover of my hundredth weird dream of the year - the only kind of hangover I have to shake off these days, but no less disorientating, the dreams come in thick and fast and more bizarre as the weeks blur into months. We’re one week into the season of summer now and I try not to wish it away in my fear of losing it, to not imagine the days getting shorter and the leaves turning gold before they fall, but sunset is already happening earlier and earlier now we’ve passed the summer solstice. Time races and we foolishly try to keep up. 

I don’t think I’ve been this sober this long since I was 16 - admittedly that still excludes caffeine, a habit that feel harmless in the grand scheme of things but I know, I know no habit is harmless. Your habits become your identity. Habits can be a weakness, a curse, a personal limbo. Sobriety is a weird new identity, one I haven’t owned since I was a child. Finally, I am a sober adult. The clarity is awful and triumphant. My [personal] definition of sobriety encompasses a large scope - anything dopamine-inducing or mind-altering, which is alot of things. No shit.

In my dreams I talk to people I no longer see, some are alive but dead to me, walking the earth somewhere, but they’re thinking of me too, there isn’t a doubt. Outside of a state of lucidity I get to tell them all the things that I unintentionally push out of my conscious mind everyday. Sometimes it’s not that deep and I find myself just telling them about my day, normal conversations over cups of tea, and then I wake up alone in my bed with a thick head and I read about dream telepathy. At least in our dreams our psyches get to live in a state of childlike freedom and abandon, no rules, no ego, no regret.

I’ve pushed past the age of defiance, a time when I’d mourn the last year and fret over the new one. I’ve woken up with some gratitude, and it’s a feeling I want to nurture. I’ve just turned 33. Perhaps in a desperate attempt to understand why we’re alive, what is the meaning of it all, I’ve been reading about this master number, always familiar but something I never tried to understand. Wherever you look - studying numerology, spirituality, religion - it’s significant, and I can’t seem to gauge the source of it all, what connects them all, why 33 is the consistent.  

Christianity says Jesus was crucified and resurrected at the age of 33. Whatever the truth, there is something in that tale of darkness, death, rebirth and joy. The winter solstice, the death and rebirth of the sun. On a tasbih - Islamic prayer beads - there are usually 99 beads, and you pray in sets of 33. Sometimes there are just 33 beads on a tasbih. Islamically, it’s said that dwellers of heaven will exist eternally at the age of 33, “the age of strength and youth.” Perfect balance between wisdom and vitality. Equilibrium. A peak, optimal, prime. Forever. Oh yes, Death Becomes Her.

You can look through the threads of history and find 33 everywhere - in Vedic religion, the solar system… Or you can look at the body, feel your own 33 vertebrae in your spine, spend some time massaging the chakra points along it. Root, sacral, solar plexus, heart.