It ain’t so bad.

Getting older. Tomorrow is my 31st birthday, and as I reflect on my first year of this new decade in my life, I’m finding myself more centered and alive than ever before.

It’s a permanent solution to a temporary problem. Suicide. The one societal topic that makes everyone squirm, conjuring traumatic memories as we think back on those familiar faces no longer with us, but dearly missed.

That song — you know that song — came over the stereo and I felt my shoulders relax.

There are singers, there are performers, and then there’s Laura Reed. 

Wandering the numerous floors and stages of New Mountain Asheville (a wild, freewheelin’ venue) last February, I eventually found myself downstairs in the main room, immersed in a sea of joyous faces, all eager to boogie down to legendary New Orleans funk-n-soul group Dumpstaphunk (featuring Ivan Neville).

The alarm went off on my phone. Monday morning. 6:45 a.m.

Throwing my father’s old Dodge Dakota into park, I stepped out of the truck and felt the crunch of snow and ice beneath my feet.

I cracked the foamy Sam Adams Boston Lager and relaxed into my seat. Christmas Eve. Red-eye flight. Charlotte to Burlington, Vermont. All in an effort to be in the living room of my parent’s farmhouse in the morning to watch my year-and-a-half old niece open her mountain of gifts.

She grabbed for my hand and held it up.

“No ring, huh? You should meet my daughter sometime. Single. Beautiful. I think y’all would get along pretty well.”

So, you’re from Canada? Not quite, but close. Growing up on the Canadian border, most folks there don’t really take notice of where they live, or how odd it perhaps may seem to reside so close to a foreign country because, well, it’s always been that way, you know?

America, I’m tired. I’m tired of the violence, the bloodshed, the yelling, the anger, the hate, the misinformation, the way we mistreat others, the way we lie to each other and to ourselves, about what it is we see outside our windows and in our bathroom mirrors.