Notes on twenty-five
introspective interlude!
It’s the old adage, I’ve had a lot going on, there’s a lot on my plate. We hear this again and again, to the point of being unbelievable. Flaky.
Yet I’ve used it several times within the past few months, and I’m going to use it again. Not as a means of getting out of writing, but rather as a motive. I have a lot on my plate, therefore I will write to relieve myself. It’s a simple reframing that I’ve had to spend more than a simple amount of time applying. And here we are, already at the end of summer.
It was my birthday on August 2. And that, in typical fashion, provides all too much opportunity for reflection. I turned twenty-six this year, still a baby, still learning. Yet I feel my brain slowly turning to mush, and with that the onset of a fatigue that I haven’t quite figured out the antidote for, other than total remove to the mountains (which then, in my opinion, fuels the anxiety that my brain is turning to mush from being so removed from current affairs). Twenty-five smacked me in the face with thrilling and painful experiences that ruminated in the form of a quarter life crisis, where I certainly felt my age physically (certainly not as spritely as my earlier twenties), yet mentally I felt scrambled. A big learning curve, shall we say. Picking up the pieces, stitching idiosyncratic ends together - that is the project lately as I arrive at a new year.
I thought about making this a typical newsletter - what I’m buying, eyeing, wearing, going, the works. It didn’t feel right. I sat down several times to try and understand the purpose of what I was doing - that led to a very dark hole. Some suggested a vacation recap of my Italian escapades and French Alp hiking adventures. You simply must do it - that’s all I could surmise in terms of advice. And (I owe this in part to a tinge of laziness), I liked keeping my vacation more private. Call it gatekeeping, call it whatever you want, I didn’t plan some grand vacation in bucket list hotels. I went to the usual Italian destinations (Tuscany), and hiked in Chamonix (staying in a somewhat dingy apartment). It was incredible.
So what to write about instead?
I started this newsletter as a love letter to my community, a way to feel closer to me. Along the way, I seemed to forget that I’m also a part of this little community, and haven’t really been treating myself with the love and kindness I want to project online. Twenty-five has been one of the best years of my life. It was also deeply painful. Closure is something that we speak of often - I’m still grappling with how I feel about this, especially since in some cases we just never find it. But I think that in writing, I can give myself the closure I desire from this silly little age. Something to remember a monumental year, maybe share a little more perspective with you.
NOTES ON TWENTY-FIVE
This is the year I bought my first home. It was a fluke and somewhat sudden - as I write this, I'm procrastinating packing up my old apartment because everything just feels a little bit emotional today. I didn’t expect to cry when handing over the cheque to pay for the space, I didn’t expect to curl up in a corner of the new space and weep. I found comfort in the fact that my grandfather bought his first home in the midwest for something like USD$13,000 (this was a long time ago). Legend has it that he came home, sat at the table with his head in his hands, and cried. It wasn’t necessarily sad tears - rather, I interpreted the anecdote somewhat differently. The process of home buying is so overwhelming and quick and serious and downright expensive that elation seems unfitting. It’s a big, big deal. And I felt the weight of this severely.
This is the year where I accepted that things might just be a little out of order for me. Society taught me that you will grow up, go to university, get a job and work for the man, meet someone, move in together, get married, have children, grow old, die. When I bought my first home, I did it alone, and that threw a wrench in the linear narrative. And for some reason, this was a weird notion to grapple with. But thinking of all the incredible women I admire, who did the exact same thing, put me at ease.
This year was the first time in a long time that I experienced heartbreak. And it was really not worth it. However, I noticed the recovery time is much slower as I get older. When my mother said, “Why are you upset? It wasn’t anything serious,” it felt like a knife in my stomach because I knew she was right. This year I gained the perspective that getting out of something unhealthy - any situation, really, friendship, partnership, etc. - is far more difficult than simply “snapping out of it.”
The scars from heartbreak are such that you can never really get rid of them, but you will learn to frame them as lessons learned for opening up to new people. My friends helped me immensely - exposure therapy, it’s called. I got a bartender’s number, went on a couple dates, it was so silly. But I’m slowly learning that not everyone wants to hurt me.
The deepest scar, I’ve learned, resurfaces when I try to open up with people, be they friends or partners. I feel icky and deeply ugly at my most vulnerable, always searching for signs of why not to like someone, or why they wouldn’t want to be around me. One day I’ll learn to surpass that.
It’s okay to be intimidating. A lot of incredible, creative women are perceived this way, and rumour has it that it comes off as scary. Someone else’s insecurities are simply not my problem. Recall the Sex and the City episode where Carrie talks about Simple Girls vs. Katies. Cringey comparison aside, I will accept that a) it is very okay to be a simple girl, and a lot of people in my life are simple girls, and b) I am not a simple girl.
This is the year where I became aware of death, with the passing of my grandfather. It was a weird feeling.
This is also the year where I finally started to get over the insecurity I have of telling people what I do for a living. Influencer, content creator, community manager - it’s all the same, really.
SPOILER ALERT: I watched the Barbie movie (multiple times) and laughed most at the guitar playing scene, because this has happened to me all too many times and it’s nice to know that it’s a shared horrific experience.
My sister pointed out that I feel things deeply, perhaps in a more heightened way than her. Think of emotions like a sine wave, where the reference line marks homeostasis. My sine wave has a larger amplitude than hers, which she points out manifests in really high highs, and deeply sad lows. It does not make me more special than others to have a bigger amplitude - rather, I desire contentment. The wavelengths in the sine graph feel turbulent and uncontrollable at all times, and I find yourself heaving and sobbing in the middle of a run unexpectedly, or so elated that I cannot stop smiling for multiple consecutive hours, hugging everyone I see. I’ve termed these moments Big Feelings, and I now understand a little bit better why everyone likes to put a label on absolutely everything.
AND OTHER THOUGHTS
When I wrote these notes a few weeks ago, I let them marinate for slightly too long. Letting things sit results in copious amounts of overthinking and wondering whether I now bear the level of irritating qualities as your local pick-me girl, but alas - I thought it better to put the writing out into the ether and consider it the closure on yet another spectacular and dynamic year. Perhaps some of the wisdom I’ve gained will actually stick this time as I venture into my twenty-sixth year. Perhaps.
I anticipated this newsletter being a monthly delivery with a concrete format and far more standardization than what actually came to be. So maybe next week I dispatch the usual shopping wish list (bound to have some dash of home decor in there, since that’s all I seem to look at these days) for you to peruse. But in the meantime, let’s keep it brief. Here’s the August playlist I never put out - I do find it translates well into September (read: a slightly tumultuous toss up of upbeat and energizing with cozy, warm and fuzzy tunes. Though let’s be real - nothing about this upcoming September is cozy).