At twenty-one I spent my days writing about experiences I did not yet have. I spent my nights shuffling around an art museum.
When I turned twenty-two I worked three jobs and for five months not a single hour of my life was unaccounted for. Sleep, work, work, sleep, work some more. I finally paused to breathe and was on the road to California when I received a call with an offer to work/live in Hawaii.
What would you do? I chose aloha.
It was during my twenty-third year that I stopped writing and starting living. The condensed edition: there was a grand sailor romance, a shipwreck, weekend island hopping, lunch at two different country clubs, piñata parties, an almost tsunami, job offers in three states, a marriage proposal and a pet rat. I rode The Bus around the island and learned how to pronounce street names like Keeaumoku (Keh-eh-ow-mo-ku). I ran half-marathons and ate unlimited amounts of poke and musubi. My library queue included titles like Sex, Lies and Videotape and the self-help guide How to Flirt. (In case you were wondering step one is make eye contact.)
At twenty-four I moved back to the mainland with my main man and we packed my little yellow car to the brim. Together we drove to another city across the country, sight unseen. Stronger and braver from my last move, I wanted to live out The Mysteries of Pittsburgh and the miseries of grad school.
When I turned twenty-five my mom flew out and we wandered Pittsburgh’s hilly enclaves, breathing in true fall, eating pierogi. The houses of Squirrel Hill were those that movie characters inhabit — sprawling, lawned, brick — a far cry from the stucco tract housing and crushed gravel desertscapes of my childhood. That summer I hit repeat on year twenty-two and flew alone to the other side of the world. For four months I indulged in chili-spiced meals at hawker centers, smelled durian, sipped wine at embassy parties and ferried to Indonesia. In all of this I realized that my heart was on the other side of the world — when I got home I got down on one knee and he said yes.
At twenty-six I lost the only grandparent I’d ever known, my beloved Bushie (Bushia). I graduated from two long years spent cramming for tests in an overheated basement. Matt and I again packed up my little yellow car with all we owned, including two surly guinea pigs, and headed west. We made it back in time to get hitched and re-acclimate to flip flops (slippahs).
Twenty-seven was our year of domestication. Together we bought a condo, mixed bank accounts, did yard work and adopted a dog. We survived being hit by a drunk driver. My mom got cancer. We cheered her on through wigs and chemo, through radiation, through stage two and stage four.
A month after my twenty-eighth birthday, I experienced my happiest and saddest moments. I became an aunt to Abigail Theresa and, a few weeks later, lost my mom. After a year spent fighting and beating cancer — her hair had started to grow back (!)— it was a careless driver who took her life while she was out on an evening walk with her dog. I was hammered with the weight of truth she’d been breathing into me all those years: LIFE ISN’T FAIR. This reverberated through me each day as I struggled to reconcile my new reality. For twenty-eight years she was my truth. My daily hello, goodbye and every utterance in between. Every day onward was a day without her, another twenty-four hours spent missing her touch, her laugh, her presence. I feared each new milestone knowing I wouldn’t be able to share it with her.
Twenty-nine wasn’t much better. To get to/from work and to pass time I rode my bike (sans helmet and with headphones full blast) crazy distances. I stared down careless drivers, daring them with my gaze: go on, do it, hit me. I was angry. I was lost. I drank too much. I didn’t forget and I certainly didn’t forgive.
As I turned thirty I made the decision to start marking my life forward with my own traditions. Matt and I went to Vegas for Christmas. It was merry with buffets and heated shark pools. On mother’s day we closed the blinds and went for a hike out of cell service. (You don’t miss calls as much when you can’t receive them.)
Nearing thirty-one I look back on my twenties and realize they weren’t what I expected. However, in retrospect, nothing ever is. As I deep dive into this new decade I have more lines on my face and I no longer yearn for experiences simply for the sake of having something to write about. I now look again toward the future and I’m open to the endless possibilities that I know it will bring. I’m ready to carpe decade, so hit me up in nine years for another retrospect.
Onward.
—
Note: This post is inspired by a fantastic little piece of writing from last month’s New Yorker by Catherine Mevs titled My Twenties: A Retrospect
Read here: http://www.newyorker.com/humor/daily-shouts/my-twenties-a-retrospective
