I said goodbye to 31 facing the ocean, my jeans flapping in the roaring wind. It was dark and I could barely get a breath in, the wind pushing its way inside my lungs. I said the ocean was angry. My friend said no she’s not, she’s alive. I didn’t mind that the ocean was angry though. I was too. I found comfort in her enormous self, taking up all the space to thrash about. She was expressing herself, letting it all out, letting it all go. If I was alone I might’ve shouted with the ocean. But there were drunk couples scattered about, taking photos with flash, giggling. I don’t even really know what I was angry about, or if I truly was, or if it was just all of life I needed to let out.
I said goodbye to 31 painting the living room and dining room walls back to white. They were this brilliant blue and yellow, but we switched the rooms a month ago (put the dining in the living room and vice versa) and now the colors didn’t make sense, now the colors were sloppy. I was itching to get rid of them, feeling claustrophobic just looking at them.
At the beginning of this year, I wrote a piece titled, Back To Basics. In it, I said I had a feeling that “back to basics” would be this year’s theme for me. I didn’t realize how much it would puncture every area of my life though. At the time, I had no idea I would be painting the house back to white. I didn’t know I would be taking down all my gallery walls and starting over, this time really looking at my art collection and the photos I framed. I noticed it was none of the photos I actually wanted up. I needed to get those printed, this was just good enough because I wanted instant gratification.
I said goodbye to 31 being offline from Instagram. The tension was building up for me, and it started to become bad for my mental health. I had 26k followers but never felt more alone. I couldn’t think anymore, my brain felt like it was littered with other people’s opinions about me and books and what I should or shouldn’t read, how I should and shouldn’t think. There was this undercurrent of competition and negativity despite the dull claim to positivity in the bookstagram world. It’s the old broken record I’ve been writing about for a while but this time I finally dared to take a break and leave it all for a while even if it meant I lost everything I worked for. Or maybe this isn’t courage but a breaking point. Either way, it’s the best thing I could have done. I feel free.
I said goodbye to 31 sketching my roses in the backyard. I have been photographing my roses every day since I started my garden, studying them, and watching as they grew taller and taller. I said goodbye to 31 while listening to “Everything I Know about Love” by Dolly Alderton on audiobook. She was in my ears while I painted the walls white. I didn’t really enjoy the book, but it was sort of liberating to read something I didn’t fully enjoy, to not have to underline and critique and study. It was liberating to not have an agenda I needed to adhere to.
Birthdays have always been hard for me. They are important to me. I guess I feel like they are the one time of year people are supposed to pay attention to you. Birthdays have always been an obvious benchmark of my desire for love and attention, that there’s some childhood void in me somewhere that I think a birthday can cure. Which is why inevitably birthdays always make me sad. I expect too much and get disappointed. I forget that no matter what day it is people are still mostly thinking of themselves.
I spent the Friday and Saturday leading up to my birthday anxious. I was uneasy about how I would react and feel on the day. I was on edge for the end and the beginning. But mostly I was worried if I would receive love and if that would mean anything to me, or too much to me, and if I could release the nuisance of a birthday. Why can’t you just be one of those normal people who don’t care about their birthdays?
I would like to say I am growing out of this, but on the eve of my birthday, I laid in bed with Hayden after drinking half a beer and told him I was afraid no one loved me or cared about my birthday. It took 32 years to find the strength to whisper those words instead of dancing around them. The simplicity of his answer shook me out of the mental state I had put myself in. Don’t let those feelings swallow you. People do love you and care about you. Let it be enough.
When I was planning this essay I was going to reflect on my former years and talk about when I decided to be a writer for real. I was going to talk about my 25th birthday in New Mexico, getting the typewriter, and staying in a writer’s home, and that the reason I went to New Mexico in the first place was because that’s where Natalie Goldberg lived and I was reading a lot of her reference/craft books. I was going to talk about reading The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing and filling a journal a month. I was going to look back on old self-portraits and talk about how insecure and scared and bitter I was, but also how inspired and creative and bold I was too. But I don’t know, I’ve been looking at the past a lot lately, and maybe it isn’t always a measure of anything. Maybe I don’t need to look back to know I’ve changed and settled. Maybe I will come back around to writing that essay, but for now, I want to look forward.
Hayden and I were in the backyard looking at our fruit trees and roses. We were planning out what new plants we wanted and when to transfer our current ones into terracotta pots and where to place them. We were talking about what his blood orange tree and my lemon tree would look like in ten years. How eventually, they will get so big you could climb the branches. How fun, we’re planning things decades in advance, Hayden said. And it was fun. I used to hate the future, it used to give me great anxiety. I was obsessed with immediacy, felt comfortable in it. I used to say, I don’t know what I will want in the future, I could be dead by then! I was somehow afraid of saying, or thinking the wrong thing, like the future was a pass/fail exam. I used to be annoyed at how long the future always seemed to take. But now I am settling into everyday growth. I am settling in the joy that this small lemon tree will one day be so big it could hold the weight of a human. How next year my roses will be as tall as me, how everything keeps growing and growing and there’s no need to rush because we all get there anyway.
So I said hello to 32 with my family and some of Haydens and the ones not here sent lovely messages that I screenshot to remember. I said hello to 32 happy. I said hello to 32 crying at a letter my sister wrote me because she gets me. I said hello to 32 eating my favorite spaghetti my sis and mom made, knowing that I am so lucky to have this moment. I said hello to 32 to my dad holding 13 roses in his hand for me, and telling me as he does every year that 13 roses is good luck. I smiled at the same speech knowing that I am so lucky for this moment too. I said hello to 32 with my childhood friend and her mom calling me and singing me happy birthday. I said hello to 32 with my friend sending me a playlist she spent weeks making, a labor of love. I said hello to 32 eating a burnt, well done beef milanesa steak with rice and chimichurri and bread and garlic goat cheese with Hayden while watching Modern Family, which is the only thing I really wanted to do, I am a creature of habit after all.
I said hello to 32 working, instinctively being mad about it but then training myself to be okay with it, because why should it be different anyway? I don’t want to lead with anxiety in my 32nd year. I don’t want to care what anyone thinks about me. I want to be sure about what I think of myself. I don’t want to be afraid of messing up. I want to be sure that I am trying enough that I might mess up, that it doesn’t matter if I do.
So it’s been a week since I turned 32. I rounded the corner and here I am. Nothing is particularly different about 32 so far, except maybe this resting assurance that everything will be okay. Work is building up, and the rain is too, and now the heat is also building up. I am eager for sun tans and summer clothes. I am hopeful for my garden, for writing by the garden until the heat becomes unbearable. I’ve always loved that my birthday is at the end of April. It feels like the perfect time to start once more. What’s the saying? April showers bring May flowers?
32 Things I Have Learned In My 32 Years:
It’s okay to be a picky eater. Why does anyone care? I like what I like! I don’t like any red in my meat. I want it burnt and crisp. Being a picky eater doesn’t mean I don’t try new foods. It just means I won’t eat what I don’t like. And it strangely has taken me this long to understand that. I used to think I needed to cook all the same dishes my mom made growing up or cook these random dishes I saw on Pinterest. But I finally realized I could cook exactly what I liked.
99.9% of the time people are always just thinking about themselves. So you can stop overthinking about that dumb thing you said, or if they like you or not. The truth is, they have already forgotten about you and are back to thinking about what they should eat or watch on TV.
32 is very young, despite it sometimes feeling very old when seeing people in their early 20s. Though old and young are so arbitrary and irrelevant. I only mention this to inspire hope. I only now feel like my life is starting.
There is no right and wrong way to work out, only what is right for you. (This pretty much goes for anything) Why do we make these rules up in our heads about how things should be? I don’t love high-intensity workouts with loud music. I like my Pilates class online, where she is highly technical and focuses on form. In fact, I love focusing on form, which seems obvious now as someone who grew up doing ballet. Form is like baking, its following directions, its easy to see steps that you can follow that you know will get results. It feels like doing one of those brain puzzles on my phone, like a matching game. I also like walking, a lot, mostly with friends though.
You don’t need that impulsive thing you want to buy for your home or your closet or your craft. If you feel rushed into buying it, if you feel in a state of panic over it, or like you might die if you don’t have it, that probably means you shouldn’t buy it yet. Thinking about purchases is so underrated.
I don’t know if time heals all wounds, but things pass. Eventually this giant feeling you feel, good or bad, will quiet and neutralize and pass, and that’s a good thing. It’s the cycle of life. Know that this painful sorrow you’re feeling now will slowly dissipate. If you hold on, you’ll get through it.
Learn to laugh at yourself. Life is just so much more fun if you can do that. Laugh at the absurdity of life!
Relax! Slow Down! God, nothing will pass you by that is meant for you. Which is maybe annoying to hear and a semantics argument is possible here, but what I mean is, fear of missing out is sort of silly. It keeps you in fight or flight mode, thinking everything is scarce. I have a tattoo on my wrist I got from a letter Steinbeck wrote to his son, “nothing good gets away.”
You actually don’t need to be cool. You don’t need to be hot. You don’t need to be sexy. You don’t need to be an It Girl or an It Boy. You don’t need to be impressive. It’s all so boringly subjective, and irrelevant. I promise you that being the “cool” one is not what it’s cracked up to me. (Not saying I have experience but I do have experience in trying to be cool and wanting to be cool)
You are enough. I know this is a corny cliche. I know you might not let it seep into you as you read this. Maybe you are rolling your eyes at this “unhelpful” advice. Or maybe you are years ahead of me, already comfortable with the notion of “you are enough” as you are. But when it does hit you, that startling obvious statement we all hear, it will wash over you. It will feel like breathing again.
Dreams do change. You don’t need to be alarmed by it. People on the outside may make you feel weird about it at first, don’t blame them. But the truth is that dreams are often not finite. They ebb and flow and shift around into completely different forms. Your dream might take you somewhere else. Maybe you come back or maybe you fork off to a different path. Embrace it!
You are never too old to start over. You are never too old to learn a new hobby. You are never too old to start something new.
Love yourself at every stage. I realize this is starting to sound a little preachy and self-help, but it’s true. I look back at so many photos from my past. When I turned 22…when I turned 26… I was so self-critical. There was always something gnawing at me that I thought I needed to “fix”, always something I disliked or wished was different, always something I felt I was so behind on. Now I wish I had given myself more grace.
Unfortunately waking up early is all it’s cracked out to be. But don’t fret. You can still stay up late if you want to. I once prided myself on being the ultimate night owl, often not going to bed until 3 AM. But recently I have been waking up at 7 AM, and it has been sort of nice to wake up softly with my coffee and the birds and the flowers.
Friendships end sometimes. That’s okay. Hopefully new ones spring forth. But the ending of a friendship always hurts, no matter the age. There isn’t any use in trying to dissect it or unravel it, some things just are.
Sing badly more often. Dance badly too. Be cringe. Embarrass yourself. Life is both short and long, silly and serious. Looking “bad” in front of someone is such a small problem to care about. Because WHO DECIDES THE RULES?
Please! Would you stop comparing yourself to everyone? You will never be anyone but yourself. Which you should be grateful for!
Don’t hold in tears or sneezes. Or laughs for that matter. Let it out, maybe get a tissue for the sneeze. The people who can cry freely are some of the most beautiful people I’ve met.
Run towards your flaws. It’s a wonderful reminder of how human you are. Flesh and bones baby. You and I are the same. There’s something humbling about that. We wouldn’t be able to connect to a robot, a perfect being. Give me all the imperfect people.
You can have more than one hobby or interest. You can do all of the things. You can be two things at once. You don’t have to niche down. I’m beginning to think “niche down” is a marketing tactic we have employed in our everyday language due to social media. But as a human you don’t have to niche down, because you don’t have to be “the best” at everything, you can do things for fun you know.
Build something. A garden, a family, a business, an art piece, a movie, a painting, an essay, a community, a friendship.
Lean into the uncomfortable, that’s the only way change happens.
Don’t be so literal. Believe in poetry and metaphor and truths that are not facts. There is a time and place for semantics.
You cannot control how people perceive you. The sooner you realize that the sooner you will be free. And trust me you will still try to control it, but it’s not worth your time and effort.
Apologizing when you’re wrong does in fact make you a better person. Taking accountability is self-respect.
It’s okay to not do everything by the book. I don’t want to give bad advice here, but I sort of think its okay to make mistakes, you don’t have to dot all your i’s and cross all your t’s. Because the lessons in the mistakes are more valuable. There is life lived, emotions felt, impulse given, and learning.
Save money.
Don’t be afraid to ask for things. Help, more money on a job, benefits, etc. You deserve what is fair. The hardest part is asking for help, but the reward is greater.
Swallow your pride!!!
Never stop being vulnerable. Life bends to those who show their hearts.
Realize that sometimes hard work only amounts to hard work. We are taught that hard work will eventually land you that dream job. It might not. Luck is a huge part of this world. But I do believe hard work will show you your strengths and push you to new limits. It will make you realize how capable you are, and only good can come from that.
Life gets easier and better and harder sometimes too. Life gets deeper. The things you thought would be important to you, usually don’t end up being. What matters is laughter and friendship and love. Focus on the people who love you, and not the ones who don’t. They are enough. You are enough.
so vulnerable! so passionate! ABSOLUTELY LOVED THIS.
Somehow opened this right when I needed it, thank you!