It's late, long after midnight. Through my open window I can hear a train whistle in the distance, the pitch bent into a mournful wail as it rumbles toward its destination. I like it; it suits my mood. After all, it's my birthday.

When I was very young — around ten years old — I dreamed I died in a car wreck. It was a rather horrible dream, complete with all manner of icky viscera and a drawn-out, excruciating demise. Someone at the scene commented, "It's so unfair, he wasn't even twenty-five yet."

Given such an appalling and vivid nightmare, it predictably became lodged in the folds of my brain like a shard of windshield. Dead at twenty-five. That's a heavy weight for a kid to carry, particularly one cursed with an abnormally powerful imagination. Unfortunately, it also became a recurring dream, taking on an aura of prophecy. It began to influence my decisions, albeit subconsciously. Why plan for the future if you know you won't have one?

After fifteen years of regular dreams insisting I would die twisted in the wreckage before my twenty-fifth birthday, I was rather shocked when the date passed uneventfully. For months afterward my subconscious screamed at me each night that I was intended to be dead, and each morning I would do my best to clear the shadows and carry on with my life. While the feeling eventually faded, it never completely vanished. Even now it will grip my heart in the dark and quiet hours, a dry, whispery voice telling me I am on borrowed time, that I have overstayed my welcome.

Today I am fifty years old. According to the shadows I should have been dead twenty-five years already, and it is admittedly incomprehensible that I have reached this age. Nonetheless, here I am, what is left of me: jobless, beaten down, perhaps even broken, but still alive, still working out new plans, trying to maintain some optimism. And yes, still trying to ignore the whispers in the darkness.

Realistically it's just a day, just another marker, nothing worth noting. But while I've paid little attention to behavioral standards in the past, sometimes the baggage, the heavy freight of society's expectations is hard to ignore. "You're fifty," they say, "you're supposed to have done something with your life by now. You should have a home, a family, a career, a life. What do you have? Cats, books, the Internet? When will you get serious?"

Meanwhile, the voices of society and the echoes of my nightmare often speak in chorus, asking questions in the darkness I'd rather not hear, questions I can't really answer.

This is all far too depressing, though. It's my birthday, and society dictates that it should be celebrated, if only by me. So if you don't mind, I am going to pour myself another shot of rum, sit on my porch, and listen to the rumbling of that distant train.

I wonder where it's headed?