Realizing I’m turning 23 this year feels like waking up from an evening nap, when the sun has already gone down, and you’re not sure what day it is and are too disoriented to remember if you ate already or if you should just keep on sleeping through to the morning. Or it’s like taking a walk or a run and smelling hot asphalt at the parking lot across the movie theaters instead of buttered popcorn and teenage dog days.
I have little to reflect on my 22nd year, other than a deep, constant, visceral longing to be with people—watch a movie, share a dessert, perform on a stage with a piece we’ve been working on for months.
It's tempting and infatuating to sum up my 22nd year with deep unsatisfaction for the things I lost and all the memories I could not have, all the friends I could not be with, and the landscapes I couldn’t see. But at 22, going 23 now, I am kissing the brink of adulthood and dipping my toes in the ocean of my future, with all its eddies and turbulence and waves and cyclonic gyres.
This transition to adulthood feels like standing on the shore as the ocean waves lap you up and before you know it your toes, knees, your hips and waist are immersed in the ocean and you’re left wondering how you get there, because you were definitely dry a few minutes ago.
I find myself thinking about all those things I used to find it so hard seeing myself thinking about, like why rugs are so expensive and if I really need to fold my laundry when it comes out of the dryer, or of it can wait a day (or two, or three). But heaven forbid I leave my email unopened for more than a few hours, because I don’t know how many more email lists or stupid questions I can take anymore.
22 going on 23 means excited to have an early night and when I make the perfect bowl of oatmeal, and maybe today I’ll clean the kitchen (most likely not) or call that friend I haven’t seen in a year (although I don’t know if we’ll have much to talk about). But the absolute best part is hopping on the phone or zoom calling in and almost forgetting all the time zones between you.
Who knows? Maybe I do want to start dating, or maybe I don’t want to go down the rabbit whole of “what happens next?” since I have to get back to work in a few minutes anyways. Who know where I’ll be in five years, or even next year, so I guess I had better schedule some time to think about that. Maybe Sunday.
Sometimes I’ll circumnavigate the kitchen, and looking in the fridge, I’ll take a mental note that we’re out of yogurt, and didn’t I just buy a new tub a few days ago? Then I’ll return to my desk and sit and think for hours. When the sun starts to set, it glares through my window until I close my blinds, and when I open them again, I notice that it is night.
And in all my questions, I wonder if my world is shrinking, or if I am expanding? And what am I expanding into?
And what is adulthood if not a fumbling in the dark, stumbling for answers, with the memory of childhood our map; and our twenties, a department store dressing room where we get to try on all the different tropes of who we want to be, the mundanities we want to call our own, and change into something we really like-- and hopefully it’s in our budget.