Here's To One Decade At A Time

Sometime in my early twenties, I stumbled upon a little gem online and despite the increasing depth of the internets, Google still manages to find it for me - hidden in the comments section of a blog I still adore. Even if it failed to do so, I have the precise location of where I wrote this in my old journal accurately memorized. The author had written this message in a card he gave to his sister, who had just turned twenty years old, and she ended up cherishing it forever:

You have entered the most turbulent decade of your life. These are the years you'll experience your greatest loves, your greatest breakups, your greatest victories and your greatest hardships, all of which will lead you to the greatest decades of all: the ones in which you'll know yourself.

I shared it with my best friend, and then with my brother, on their birthdays. Though I found it after I had already entered my twenties, it made my heart swell as though it had just taken a deep breath of relief. It comforted me and gave me much hope. Hope for those greatest of loves and victories, and hope, too, for those lessons learned from the greatest of breakups and hardships. Most of all, I wanted that tiny flicker of light at the end of this long decade to get bigger - I wanted to know myself.

I'm not sure I feel much different at 25 than I did a few years ago. Different than 19 and 21? Of course. The amount of time that I spend drunk out of my mind has decreased dramatically. But being 23 and 24 feels like it was just... seven days ago. It's almost as if I'm disappointed that I don't know myself better at this point (ridiculous, I know), but I think I've proven myself to be the type who has terribly high expectations of ...well, everything.

When I was younger, I often imagined what I would be like when I grew up. And when I got into writing myself birthday letters, those daydreams and fantasies manifested themselves into full blown predictions and desires captured in my loopy scrawl and sealed into envelopes for years at a time. When I turned 16, I read a letter I wrote to myself at 12 years old that wanted future me to have a stereo and CDs and be "cool". Turning 23, I read a letter from 20 year old me which was emo as all heck... something about love and crying and goodness knows what. The one I liked best was the letter I wrote to myself on my 16th birthday for an older me at 20. I was cute and charming, almost funny. I spoke to myself like I was my own friend. And sometimes, I think I forget that: I am my own friend.

It seems that even the farthest reaches of my over-active imagination could only ever see me at 20, at the oldest - for I never wrote a letter to an older me after that. On the eve of my birthday last Friday, I kind of wished that I had a letter to look forward to in the morning. I suppose imagining 16 and 20 were kind of easy - 16 being smack dab in the middle of all that was to be dramatic teenagedom, and 20 being on that cusp of almost-adulthood. I'll admit that when I was 21 or so I saw myself at 27, but only because that was the age at which I always thought I'd be getting married. And being 27 sounded really cool to me because I was reading the blog of someone who was 27 at the time and gee, I just thought she was the neatest thing ever. But what of 25?

Right now it kind of feels like no-man's land, and fuzzy at best. I finished school just about a year ago now, but my ties there are still strong enough to make me feel connected (plus, I miss my life in my campus city SO DAMN MUCH) to the point where I say that I "just" finished school. I'm working a full-time 9 to 5 gig, but I don't really feel that it's "me" quite yet. I kind of know deep down that I won't be there forever and that I'm ultimately looking for something a little... else. I moved back home; and after living on my own for five years I have to admit that it feels funny, to say the least. See? Not a student, but not really an adult. Even if I were to have imagined myself at 25, my letter would have been so lofty that upon reading it I might have actually burst into tears. Perhaps I should be glad that I could never figure out what my mid-twenties were supposed to be like.

And I guess that's it right there - it's not really supposed to be anything, but it's everything all at the same time. It's love and loss. It's winning and not. It's good, it's bad. It's all-you-can-eat Japanese with your family one night, getting dolled up for a club only to be thrown out later for being obnoxiously over-intoxicated the next, and geeky, cheery goodness at Medieval Times the following. Looking back at my youth (gosh, that makes me sound old, but I didn't know how else to say it), I can confidently state that I did most of my "growing up" in my twenties - and will continue to do so.

So here's to the lack of birthday letter and to realizing that I had no idea what was to come. As much as I have an idea of who I'd like to be at this point in my life and who I am already, I've gotta say that at the very least, I'm pretty happy. And very grateful. Here's to those next decades, the ones in which I know myself, but in the meantime, here's to the rest of this decade now - whatever it may be.

Cheers.
10:23 pm