29

There are 364 days left in my 2nd decade of life, before that 2 becomes a 3, and the reckless youthfulness of my 20’s fades into the calm stability of my 30’s. Looking back on the earlier years I felt like this time would never really come. 30 was a far-off moment, like an imaginary number that others would reach but not me. I spent all this weekend desperate to hold on to that girl, to control the narrative and the script that had sculpted her. And all that happened with my attempts to hold on to her was that she slipped away, and the woman I am now mourned her loss and marinated in disappointment rather than celebrating her rebirth.

I look back on her with a desire and love that only comes with the rose-colored glasses of time. The way she loved so easily and lived so recklessly. She was a girl who laughed and danced, who lusted after the wonders the world had to offer and looked to the future as an empty canvas that could still be painted however she saw fit. In reality when those glasses are lifted, and that nostalgia removed, that girl was not nearly the epitome of all I hope to be. She never loved herself either, she never felt fulfilled, felt just as hopeless and scared for the future. The act of continuing to hold on to that person I was does nothing but create more moments that lack appreciation for the person I am now. Because although I have spent much of the last two years striving to get back to that person, to be who I was before, there comes a realization that it will never and can never happen because my 20’s are not a steady march to her death but an acknowledgment that she has died every moment since her birth. The girl who sat on that first flight to Ireland excited about all the possibilities the world had to offer was gone before the flight landed, and the girl I rewatch in videos dancing and laughing like the moment would never end was gone before the camera stopped rolling.

She was not perfect, happier, kinder, or full of more self-love than the person I am now. She was just as hard on herself, selfish and sad because she didn’t appreciate the person she was as she was her. There is only this moment right now and what we make of it, and holding on to that girl I was does nothing but deny the opportunity to love who I am and will still become. 30 does not mean less laughing or exploring or learning, but it does mean 10 more years of experience that has shaped my identity not for the worse or for the better, it just has.

So while I started this as a John Doe letter to the girl I was in my 20’s, I want to finish this as a love letter to myself, who I am now at 29 and who I will be at 30. This is a promise to not let the pressures of society dictate my feelings of self-worth, and to try not to let my own expectations ruin fleeting moments. This is a promise to stop waiting for the perfect memory to cling to year over year but to appreciate each one of those moments for the version of myself that only exists once. This is a promise to stop waiting for a dead girl to come back to life in order to enjoy the girl that is alive now, to spend more time doing the things I love even if she wouldn’t have loved them, to appreciate more deeply the people I care about even if there are less of them and to do better than she would have or could have.

It won’t ever be the same, I know, I will probably never travel with the same freedom, have as large a group of friends, or live with as much a disregard for life's consequences, but for all the things she had and did that I will not, I know this new version of myself will also have and do things she did not or could not. The experiences she had will help shape my trajectory but they don’t have to determine it, and that trajectory will never bring me back to her even as I carry parts of her with me.