Recently I was inducted into the upper-twenties crowd. This celebration means that I am on the slippery slope and fast slide to 30. Then skipping twenty years I'll be 50 and within a blink of an eye I'll be 75, with presumably only 25 years left (maybe only five that I'll actually remember). Well, here's to life being officially over. This was at least the partial panic attack slash emotionally disturbing cycle of thought that occurred in those first few hours of being 25 +1.
You see when you're 20-25 all the questions coming your way are: what are you going to do...who are you going to be?. When you're 20-25 there is a somewhat grace period for not knowing as if it's almost a given that it will take some time. The physical response is one of empathy, sympathetic understanding, there is a sigh, a sweet pat and a simple nod as if saying, "You'll figure it out, I promise, just give it some time".
Now that I'm in the 26-30 demographic it's different. Now you have to know. Now you had better know and you had better be doing all the things you spent your early twenties trying to figure out. The response now is a sense of shock and wonder, a surprised "Oh" or "Interesting" (that's southern speak for "she's screwed"). Despite pursuing my masters, despite having a somewhat hazy at best picture of the future, there still is a constantly growing list of all the blank spaces, the holes, the unsolved puzzle pieces.
Now, I've given being 25+1 a few days and like most things in my life come to terms with the obvious and unavoidable. Time always moves forward. There is no going back, but there is the choice to move forward. Maybe that's what being 25+1 is all about, coming to term with the uncertainty or un-controllable force that life can be? Maybe 25-30 will be even more self-forming than 20-25.
A quarter of a century behind me, I look ahead to the next three (here's hoping that the technology in health care continues to advance...). I will face this next season head on but I am taking with me:
In my 25 years of breathing and being I have come to know one thing more than anything. My whole world is constantly and will always be bombarding me with messages, truth and lies about who I am, what I should be, what I could be, what I am not, what I will not be. In the roar of unavoidable directive claims over my identity, I can choose to be who they/it/them/ tell me to be. I can spend these next three quarters of my life faking it, trying to make it, trying to be it, or I can take a deep breath and just be me. I can be Authentically Me. Here's a hint: I'm so diving into the later.
-Authentically Me
