Ten thoughts on turning Twenty Four
Champagne spillin’, you should taste that
1. Fluidity.
I moved to a third continent to work for a cause that has driven almost all my professional and personal decisions. This was a year of never-ending food, fluidity, and fresh pasta. But also bruschetta, hope, and endless possibilities of a world out there beyond what I was used to.
2. Stubbornness.
I wanted to try meat. There, I said it. For the first time in twenty four years, I sat staring at a plate of meatballs, as I considered trying just one piece. Would the new world of flavors and textures blow my mind? Had I become a hypocrite — yelling at the world to live for life experiences when I shut myself off to such a carnal one? And just like that, I realized what unintentional peer pressure felt like, and decided not to let momentary indiscretions change a lifetime of beliefs. This was, at the heart of it, a year of stubbornness, because what’s life without an identity?
3. Friends.
Good friends are the ones for whom you stock up food in the house. Best friends are the ones who are the reason why you never have food in your house. This was a year of best friends.
4. Travel.
I saw more countries in one year than I had in the past twenty three combined. This was the year I knew that life experiences matter much more than an overflowing bank account (or maybe this is how I continue to make excuses, ha). Trade a seven-figure house for sahlep in Istanbul, a hike along Sentiero degli Dei, or Oktoberfest in Munich? Any day.
5. Negation
At the end of every one of those tiring trails I trotted along, I started feeling overwhelmingly burned out. Far from the fear of missing out, I started experiencing the fear of burning out. And if left unchecked, I would have retreated back into the familiar depths of claustrophobia — the desire to just pack my bags and run. So, this year, I learned to say no, and what a year it has been. I am almost ready to return home.
6. Failure
Saying no also meant acknowledging the failure of some relationships and letting go, no matter how much I valued them and wanted them to work. But I gave myself the chance to move on, and not feel guilty. This was the year I understood that one cannot be everything to everybody.
7. Acceptance.
I lost count of the number of times I looked at the mirror, and found myself staring into memories instead of looking at a reflection, fueling an understated yearning to become a child, if only to see him again. But this was the year of acceptance — acceptance that such visits will be relegated to the realm of dreams in the future.
8. Music.
Also underneath the wavering: what a year of lyrical liberties, and musical freedom! The liberty to search for the sun while humming Bridge on the 59th Street as I walked along the ivy-lined, cobblestone streets. The freedom to revel in the glory of coming back home to a JT and Britney playlist after a hard day at work, or listening to the soul-crushing melancholy in the form of a string orchestra arrangement. Call it date night. Doo-tin’ doo-doo, feelin’ groovy!
8.B. Childishness.
Okay, I cheated. There’s a second part to Thought 8. My coworkers insisted that being born in 1990 automatically made me a child of the 90s; I argued, first, that I was not a child. But stopped before completing my mental math anyway. Busted. But here’s life the way I look at it: this year, and every year before, the more I grew up, the more I became a child.
9. Loneliness.
Half my friends got engaged or married this year; the other half lost their phones, missed flights, and got into drunken brawls at pubs with no intention of settling into a serious relationship. Where did I fall in this spectrum? Hmmm. I sat at a corner table in a beautiful restaurant, celebrating with a wine and truffle tasting menu, another year I’d managed to keep myself alive. But as my companion also pondered the disparity our lives had come to represent, I wondered: does love, as a construct, even exist across the boundaries of time and space? Would settling down really be so awful? This was the year when love and limitless ambition fell together into a muddled symphony of loneliness; questions with no answers.
10. Love
All good notes end with a confession, so here’s mine for this year.
I stumbled upon (really, ran headfirst into) someone who started a fire in me that cannot, and will not die. Oh, the joys of shivering at the accidental touches, and the intellectual conversations. The pain of watching the fire burn as though it was blazing through thorn bushes, as your very existence was plagued with doubt. But this was the year I realized the saddest and most awful truth of them all: that, perhaps, people like that are not always the one with whom we are meant to spend our lives with.
Draco Dormiens Nunquam Titillandus.
Over, and out.
