turning 25 -

I was sitting on my friend’s couch and thinking about my birthday (as one does) while it was snowing outside, and suddenly felt an outflow of words. These are my (mostly) verbatim ramblings from my notes app.

As a kid, the days leading up to my birthday used to be charged with anticipation. My notebooks used to be filled with countdowns, and I’d spend the days prior brimming with excited energy. “It’s my birthday next month/next week/tomorrow,” I’d announce with pride and beam expectantly at the unfortunate listener, waiting for them to reciprocate the appropriate level of excitement this momentous event deserved.

In recent years, an uneasy ambivalence began to find me on birthdays. Growing up now also meant growing old, and so excitement mingled with reticence as I looked forward to the day but dreaded what it meant. What used to be a treasured event was becoming a list of to-dos and day of unwelcome reflection about the callousness of time.

A few months ago, I decided something had to change; since circumstance remained intractable, I changed my mind.

When I discard the connotations that come with certain ages, I realize I’ve quite enjoyed growing old. I have no idea if it’s my prefrontal cortex developing, or if I have simply acquired a big enough sample size of life experiences, but I have come to recognize how I fit into the spaces I occupy and developed the language to articulate my thoughts, feelings, and sense of self. The world is intelligible to me because I am intelligible to myself. I have collected a cornucopia worth of experiences, and in turn acquired a comprehension of my tastes, preferences, likes, and dislikes. After years of tumbling through the messy unknown of trying new things in an Alice-in-wonderland kind of fashion, I now take great pleasure in wielding these words like a sword: “I don’t like this,” or “I don’t want to do this.” A few days ago, I was describing the kinds of wines I liked and disliked to a boy I’d just met, and I laughed out loud at how pretentious I sounded. I am nestled in the folds of early adulthood, caught in the wonderfully precarious age between not quite dirigible and not yet intransigent.

I’ve been thinking about trains. I’m crashing at my friend’s Upper West Side apartment on 93rd street, and with the Express line down, it’s taken twice as long to get anywhere.

I always thought trains simply reversed their direction once they got to the last stop — a simple, linear path, from one point to another. Apparently, that isn’t always the case. For instance, the old South Ferry station at the southern tip of Manhattan used to have a reversing loop at the end for trains to circle around without stopping: instead of a straight line, they took a little hiatus through the loop and crossed back to their original juncture before moving forward. A circle, of a sort.

Last month, an old friend and I were catching up over dinner, and a memory suddenly sprung up from our inconsequential conversation. “Do you remember,” he said, “when I wrote a message in a book I gave you years ago?” Of course I remembered, but this came with a curious mix of emotions: traces of the initial elation of receiving the book and the excitement of seeing there was a message for me, along with some detachment that came from viewing the event through the distorted lens of the decade that stood between. “I can’t believe I did that,” he shook his head and I grinned at him, the memory of the original emotion still alight in my veins: “I’m so glad you did.” Another circle, if you will — the parting of a gift, a hiatus spent trundling through other paths, and a brief return — foggy snippets of a book, a dark street, a hug, amid the glowing lights of dinner.

I’m growing old, but time is not lost because I know all the moments I have lived are simply waiting for me to find them again. Life is a series of circles, and the people we know and places we’ve been to will forever orbit close to us. There are circles spinning all around us — colliding at unexpected intersections and spilling with new stories and memories waiting to come back to us. I come across my younger self at odd times. I am so proud of her for braving the terrible, embarrassing, lonely, and awkward experiences so I can laugh and spin funny tales about them today. Nothing is serious but everything is important.

I forget why I was ever terrified of growing up; I am only more myself. It’s really quite simple: the carefreeness of youth has been replaced by the carelessness of adulthood — where indolence must be discarded and time must be stolen or carved out or god forbid, calendared — but one can still find soft afternoons and warm friends with snow falling lightly outside, or strains of daylight from accidentally staying up too late for a crappy book that didn’t deserve your sleep.

Sometimes, I feel full to the brink and almost dizzy with gratitude. Life has been unexpectedly graceful. I have been careened into places I never imagined I would be, and I continue to read beautiful words when I can and lean into the effusive warmth of people I love.

I’m still a little lost, but not quite ready to be found.

The adventure of things I have yet to feel! A glittering expanse of wonder to be traversed, a sea whose depths must be plumbed, and my soul an infinite vessel to be filled. Strangers to be met, skins and stories to be shed, and vulnerabilities to be uncovered like the gradual kindling of a campfire into a raging flame. Who am I? What is the purpose of my life? Here’s to more years of searching, laughing, living!