01 Age isn’t something you can quarter neatly. It is not an orange or a mooncake. It is for living, not dividing.
02 I have always thought I was born with someone else’s destiny. The only explanation I could come up with is that my mother passed on her dreams to me right before the umbilical cord was snipped.
03 There’s a point of tension in my spine that won’t go away. I like to think the younger versions of me have congregated there for a tea party.
04 I’ve recently uncovered an old photograph of me when I was four. I looked unbelievably certain of everything in life. There was no fear in my eyes. If only I could borrow her confidence without inheriting her naivety.
05 I still want handwritten letters. I want someone to go: I’ll put this down on paper so you have it even when I’m not around.
06 There are days when a name is the closest thing I have to a prayer. There are days when a name is the closest thing I have to a poem.
07 Soon, I will have held my pen tighter and longer than I have ever held my mother’s hand. But already, I am closer to thirty than my mother is. This fact lands softly when I say it aloud. It does not shatter.
08 My grandma once told me that you become less afraid of the world when you grow up. I think she was half right. I think you become acquainted with fear. I take it out for lunch. We split the bill down the middle.
09 I have become extremely capable at carrying things that look as though they should crush me flat into grit and sinew. Some call it resilience but I call it poor storage.
10 We do what we must to survive, and sometimes we run from stray cats we mistake for tigers. For example, at fifteen I decided that love and all things romantica were the only topics worth writing about. So I went out and found subjects who could break my heart.
11 There are many ways to have your heart broken in your early years: Defenestration, stomping, cardiac vandalism, amorous trepanation, live burials.
12 I do not need to tell any of you again how marvelous it was—the writing material I came away with.
13 I wanted to write because I want there to be a more concrete proof of my having existed. I want to leave more on this earth than just a fading imprint on a couch.
14 We do what we must to grow. Becoming a writer forced me to grow. I started seeing the world differently. Good different or bad different, I cannot divulge. That is between me and my maker. You can have my words but not my perspective.
15 At twenty-five, I can confirm that the sky will not fall if you are incapable of explaining mortgage rates or if your plates don’t match your bowls.
16 At twenty-five, I am beginning to realize that everybody is too busy to keep score as closely as I do. This is both liberating and ever so slightly offensive.
17 Things I thought would ruin me left me untouched. Things I thought I was over still know how to push my buttons.
18 A small part of me longs for applause when I perform the mundane faultlessly. Paying my bills. Answering my emails. Drinking water. Not “happy birthday”-ing my way back into someone’s life.
19 The difference between this year and the last is that I think god has started to hear me. Though he still chooses not to respond.
20 You can either scratch tally marks on concrete or draw a sun in the corner of an A4 paper. Time will pass anyway.
21 Time is no longer a predator. Time is a friend. I take it to dinner and order too much wine in hopes it will move slower.
22 The candles go dark then the room rebrightens. I do not disappear this time.
23 Twenty-four held me. But twenty-five rocked me and sang me a lullaby.
24 I live to write and I write to live, and I am always going to be greedy for more. When I no longer have days to grow older, you’ll know which circle of hell to find me in.
25 Please bring writing material when you visit. Preferably the kind that is both devastating and hopeful.
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