I don’t want to go in too much detail about the events that unraveled late last month. Sorry, maybe it’s a first for me to feel that I don’t want to disclose information to the world, but maybe I am growing up. I was met with condescending comments about my age. Comments like, why would you do that when you are 25?
I brushed it off in some ways because quite frankly, I could give less fucks. I took it wholeheartedly in other ways because I was afraid of what this meant for me in expectation. At 19, I remember thinking my first friend who was 23 was the oldest woman I’d ever known. I am getting off my parents insurance shy of a year’s time and it felt like a universal indicator that I need to have it figured out by then.
I bawled my eyes out first thing in the morning after watching a trailer of Michelle Yeoh as an old hag being shunned by everyone in her life. The split moment in which she chooses to deny her fate of giving into the fast ticking clock of mortality, I couldn’t help myself but just fucking cry. I thought I’d missed my grandma, but I also felt spiritually aligned with the kicking spirit of an Asian woman ortrayed to be 5 decades my elder.
Jake and I were chatting when we were driving down to Orange County, and he expressed to me he couldn’t wait to be old, like 80 years old. I told him I think that would be accompanied by joint and countless other health problems. I tell him about the conversation my grandma and I had two summers ago during a period of time in which I wished I was more asleep than alive. My grandma and I were walking through her vegetable garden as usual; I told her I am over this stage of my life and I am ready for the vegetable garden stage of my life. She laughs and tells me I must experience much more life before that. I think I cried that day because I was over it already. I was frustrated because I couldn’t fathom surviving a few more decades when I was in a state of looking up if light was going to return to my eyes on Reddit.
I am glad to say I found my desire to live on return to me, but in some ways, I feel more hesitant. No longer do I feel justified in meeting myself with grace and a quick pat on the back, but it feels more like I am punishing my mind for still letting old habits of my adolescence overtake the life I want to build for myself. I have always scolded myself for it, but somehow the weight of mature age makes the consequences even more severe. I will not accept a life I don’t deserve. I would write that repeatedly in my journal every few entries. Yet, sometimes, just sometimes, I hope so desperately to open the flood gates where I was absolutely mad with the world. In some ways, it was liberating to be so unhinged.
Last week, I cried so much walking to my car after yoga. Aligning my breath with movement did not heal me, it only enraged me that I definitely could not absolve the twisted, tangled up knot in my heart with setting an intention of serendipity. I would much rather have punched a wall or screamed so much that my voice would break the barriers of my thin walls. I weeped so much so that a lady living out of her car on that same street came to give me a hug. She told me I was too pretty to cry, and I cried some more because she was so kind. I told her the world is cruel and she only says I know, and I know that it has not been kind to her either.
I would find myself dealing with more precarious situations just hours before my first day of school. I was in predicaments where my body tensed up and I mouthed the words no, yet they did not care to hear me or abide by me setting boundaries. The exponential increase in talking about the concept of setting boundaries on the internet has almost delegitimized the action in the first place. Boys play in the grey and boys now know to shield themselves with a thick coat of claiming neurodivergency. The woman was too stunned to speak. I felt that I had been dealt with enough cards but apparently, life is the gift that keeps on giving. Without context, much of my words just sound like sayings. If I gave more context, it would feel that I would be spilling my secrets to a world that does not need to know how it could hurt me. If I were to develop a set of principles in which I should adhere as an adult woman that would absolutely insure nothing bad would happen to me, I am sure I would not follow them properly anyways.
After all, I am only and already 25.
Afterword:
I don’t really like to leave these posts or paragraphs on a cynical? note. I usually like to conclude with some grand thing about the act of moving forward. I am without effort to do so right now, but I hope you know I am. I always tell my friends, if I didn’t, I would probably die.
Xoxo,
CGFOTY
