mei's diary

i hope i always remember my twenties

At twenty-six, I feel like I have "enough" life lived to start to look back and reflect on. I notice that the things about me that have stayed the same seem more plentiful, or at least louder, than the things that have changed, and that worries me.

Somehow I've gotten it into my head that those things must be inherent to me: that I'll be forty and anxious, fifty and selfish, sixty and painfully dependent on other people for validation. I'm scared that though I've always wanted to live long and to an old age, I'm not meant to be the kind of person who grows older, because being young and insecure and persnickety is the only thing I know how to be.

I go back and forth on how truthful I think the label of "adult" is as applied to me, usually siding with whichever puts forth a more brutal argument against myself. Either I'm twenty-six, but still not an adult, not really – not in the way I live – and how embarrassing. Or I'm an adult, so all the things I dislike about myself are cemented in me now, no going back, no hope of growth like in my teenage years – how awful.

In the shower today, I recognized this as a silly way to think. Not that that completely rewired my brain immediately, but I was glad to have picked up on it at all – baby steps.

Although who I am in my day-to-day life feels largely unchanged from the me I was last year, I'd like to think I'm still changing, albeit not in a way I can recognize until some time later. Wasn't it like that in college too? The confidence and awareness I came home with at 22 were not things I left home with at 18, even though I felt mostly the same over that time period. Maybe I still have a shot at aging into the kind of person I'd be proud to be. I'm not really sure who she is, but I'll probably know her when I see her.

And yet, ack... I hope I remember who I am now, uncertain and self-sabotaging and messy and navelgazing. I absolutely hope I grow out of this me, or (more realistically) learn to cope with her neuroticism, but I also hope all the ways I've been documenting my young adult life paint a clear picture for my older self. I hope all the ways I'm not documenting my life are things she remembers, things that help her contextualize the thoughts I do post and the pictures I do take.

I hope she pieces all these things together, and that what she finds helps her feel – I don't know. A little more sure of herself when she's doubtful, a little prouder of the life she lives and the person she is. I hope that the changes that turn me into her are for the better. I hope she'll look on me at this age with more patience than I give myself today.

Hey, me! Look how far you've come!

things i can do now, maybe (more baby steps)

(The post that got me thinking about this.)

#note to self