“Nobody likes you when you’re 23.” Or so claims Blink-182 front-man Mark Hoppus in the so-catchy (and so overplayed) song of ’99, “What’s My Age Again?”

I hope he’s wrong, because I’m set to join the ranks of the once shunned pop-punk singer Tuesday. I haven’t been excited for a birthday since the milestone that was 21, and this year I’m filled with even more dread than last.

I hate feeling my early twenties slipping beyond recall, and I’m not getting much sympathy. When I lamented to my mother and her entourage at a recent dinner party that I’d really rather cease aging, they laughed at me outright (as well they should have). I was promptly instructed to “get some perspective, and refill my drink while you’re up.”

I soon found a somewhat more receptive audience in my girlfriends. I joked when I urged them to meet me at Pico’s next week for birthday La Perfectas that the only thing I have left to look forward to in life is lower car insurance, followed by death.

I was only kidding, but they seemed genuinely concerned (navigating the same twenty-something wasteland themselves) and promised to keep the booze flowing to ease the transition into dementia. I’m reminded of an episode of Newlyweds, when Jessica Simpson observes, wide-eyed: “23 is old. It's almost 25, which is, like, almost mid-20s.”

As silly as I’m sure I sound, it is a weird feeling, being so totally in this decade. I know there was never any hope for retreat, but I can’t even toe at my teens anymore. I feel as though I’m stranded on a rock in the middle of an unforgiving rushing tide toward 30.

For someone who is still occasionally struck with wonder by the fact that I have a driver’s license, it’s strange to think this decade will likely be the one in which I get married, buy my first house, experience my first major career change and maybe have my first child.

Coming home has meant facing this relentless passage of time head-on. I’ve been handed beers by kids I remember in diapers, looked up into the faces of adolescent boys whose births I witnessed and gone unrecognized by parents’ friends who demanded ID before they believed it was me.

And although the women in my life assure me that from here on out the years will fly, I’ll take some comfort in knowing that the next seven will be long.

Seven years ago I was just getting that driver’s license I’m still amazed they handed me.