Farewell Thee, 20s

As I predicted, the depression of another birthday has set in and I wanted to kick-off the year-long farewell to my 20s with all the dumb things I learned (or didn't) during what was the most excruciating point in my life. 29 is a Nowheresville-of-sorts, an insignificance of blahs as anxiety mounts for the next big milestone. I feel cheated, angry, and disappointed as I study, finesse, and wax ideas of time and how it has passed before my eyes. If there's something that I feel more strongly in my life than ever before, it's that I feel time starting to slip away.

It might be this. The other week, I was actually at a 21st birthday party for one of my friends. Really. Yes, really. Before going, I was having a convo with another friend of ours who was reflecting on being 20 and he said to me, "When I was 20, I had nothing but X, Y, Z, A, B, C, and a shitload of anger." And I thought about that. Upon conferring with a bunch of others and not volunteering "anger" as an answer to what anyone learned while in their 20s, it seemed that the common theme was - indeed - anger. Outrage at any promise that was broken, and anger that these promises can never be repaired or fulfilled, our 20s is the decade where the purity and idealism in our lives disappear. We spend the rest of our lives trying to get that innocence back.

I spent my 19th birthday in a fraternity house's doorway with a horrible case of the spins. I had to close my eyes and hold onto the doorframe for dear life, praying that I wouldn't fall over. It's been a rocky road ever since.

Age 20: Well-centered, focused and well-adjusted on the exterior. Model student. Student Senate Nerd. Advocate of Asian cultures. Part-time job at a record store and college radio station dork. Start smoking cigarettes, ending my punk/hardcore straightedge spell. New year, and new boyfriend after a classically bad dumping I endured. He gets me a CD spinner for my birthday as his music tastes don't suck. A couple of days later, my 2-month old car spontaneously combusts. My boyfriend (now ex) and I have yet to figure out the mystery of my exploding car to this day. Days later, I end up pledging a sorority, which is a pretty big mystery too. Huge friendship circle overhaul, or rather, broad-widening scope of friends with interests and views that contrast mine, mainly to shock the shit out of myself and the bubble I decide I've been living in. I can't get over my new hot boyfriend who is really sensitive, and who likes to dance· and for some reason he loves me. I really don't get it because I have a self-image problem, and withdraw into myself complete with a bottle of Boone's Fuzzy Navel, which I can never get through in one sitting. Surely, I shall work on my tolerance by the time the next year hits.

Age 21: Grades start slipping as I secure an Editorial Assistant's job at a magazine that pays me close to nothing. Become "horrible girlfriend, too ambitious to be around to share in things with me" or "bad friend, never around when you need her." I throw myself into work as my friendships fall to the background, feeling too attacked to do anything about anything. Wrote a crapload of articles and reviews, went to tons of shows. Had to drive upstate and downstate in New York a lot. Decided that if my grades will never be good enough, then maybe the life stories and the writing portfolio will. Work all the time, losing contact with friends. However, the same job also got me into clubs right up until I turned 21. When I stop spinning around, I realize that the only friends that have been retained are the ones I've met while working and while "on the scene." This leaves me pining away to socialize with people my own age as I'm significantly younger than everyone else and no one is understanding my growing pains. This was epitomized by the fact that I spent my 21st birthday puking up my first Long Island Iced Tea - a drink made by the booking agent at a club I used to end up at when I felt all stifled and misunderstood. A local patron had to hold my head over the toilet bowl in my apartment later on that night. I barely knew him. I throw a party over the weekend and I realize I haven't seen everyone that has ended up there in probably a whole semester and change. I start feeling empty and re-evaluate my approach towards life, thinking that my problems are going to be solved with what I'm going to be when I grow up. Whatever - like I know anything about anything, though at this age, I really think I do.

Age 22: I spend lots of time at the airport when it rains, listening to Radiohead's OK Computer and getting entirely too lost in my head. The prospect of graduating immediately prompts a huge identity crisis. I freak out and start applying to grad school. At the same time, I incorporate some pretty healthy doses of senioritis. I lock myself in my room and refuse to socialize with people. I regain my life as a college student in some part; I get a new record retail job and cut back on writing. Seeing and reviewing performances in the past year has taught me how to drink without puking all over myself. I can now flow very easily between a variety of booze without invoking the Technicolor Yawn, or putting myself in embarrassing situations. I become General Manager of the college radio station and spend a lot of time bullshitting and screwing around in my office. My sorority sisters show up while I'm on the air at the radio station and surprise me in Master Control behind the mic while I'm DJing, probably to get on the air, but also to wish me a Happy 22nd, complete with a nifty cake. I remember that as one of the nicest things my friends have ever done for me. I throw my first themed birthday party that weekend with my housemates. It's an 80s theme. The keg is kicked in 1.5 hours and I pass out in my bed very early, but it was really nice seeing that my friends didn't hate me as much as I thought. Days later, I get dumped - on Valentine's Day, which pretty much blew. I then crashed my car a month later and the ex-boyfriend (who recently dumped me and was the station's Operations Director) had to advance me my General Manager stipend to pay to fix my car. I lost my wallet as I cashed the check. This is all during Spring Break of my senior year. A batch of very close friends seriously betray me and my friendship circle is realigned again, as I'm left to pick up the pieces and run, flailing wildly towards graduation. I drink a lot of Hooch Lemon Brew. And a lot of Guinness. I dance a lot. I wake up at 2PM. I go to my writing classes wasted. I say goodbye to people with purpose, as if it's the last time I'm going to see them again.

Age 23: Two months old at an honest-to-God job that has nothing to do with what I studied, I feel welcome about my entry-level-ness in a completely new industry· kinda like an astronaut of sorts. I go out for dim sum with co-workers to New York City's Chinatown for my birthday. That night, we gather up a posse and trek down to Greenwich Village to eat at a vegetarian restaurant. I ended up not eating anything mainly because I had a crush on a co-worker and he ended up leaving early to do his laundry. What a sukka. I stayed sober and ended up going back up to the Bronx, berating myself the whole hour-long subway ride for not having said anything and for acting gaga like I was in high school. And ohmygod, was it obvious? And ohmygod, could everyone tell? And ohmygod, I work with him all the time. And for the next couple of months, I close old chapters from college and open new chapters with others, and it all becomes exciting in the internet heyday, because, as you know by now· at that time everyone just made shit up as they went along. A day later, I end up at my alma mater and get a tattoo. It's the only tattoo I have to signify the beginning and end of what once was and what will be. Wrong.

Age 24: Two things could have happened. I've moved out of my parents' house by now, and I've probably thrown a house party so there was probably a keg and a whole lot of liquor involved. Or, chances are that I probably got painfully drunk and had to be cast into a cab and sent my merry own way back to Brooklyn with my boyfriend taking care of me and my vomiting self. At 24, the job that once kept me happy starts to wear on me and I grow increasingly testy about doing something else. I start agonizing over pimples that should have come earlier. I start to wonder why I still dress like I'm 22, and what it would entail to dress like a 24-year-old, and whether or not it matters. I travel from state to state every month as part of a non-profit org. I hit eBay really hard to gain back remnants of my lost youth through commerce, to make myself feel better about being a big kid, and to deny that I'm growing up. I try to accept I'm an older version of myself that's making money but I exercise horrible financial restraint as a result. I check stock tickers like they are going out of style because I'm curious about my stock options, but too much of a pussy to do anything.

Age 25: I was trashed, real trashed. I slowly prepare and brace myself for the quarter-life crisis about to hit over the next 2 years. So, it makes sense I probably killed a couple of brain cells to mark this milestone. I don't remember a goddamn thing about my 25th birthday. Honest. I ended up going to London a week after and started feeling antsy about having to be in New York yet another year. A month later, I moved in with my boyfriend. A month after that, I transitioned into a new job. Too much was changing too fast and I didn't know why. Wondered why I still dressed like I was 22. Started pondering grad school. Got to see a New York/New York Subway World Series get clinched right in front of my face, while the rest of the country didn't care. I start a deep mode of withdrawal and commiserate with others feeling the same post-college ennui. I spend way too much time on the computer, writing emails that are novels, forming bonds that only end severed, and I listen to way too much whiny white boy rock music from the Midwest for my own good. It was starting to resemble something relatively stable until·

Age 26: A multi-crisis starts happening on the home front, the relationship front, and the finance front. I proceed to freak the fuck out. New York, still. Sit around, have nihilistic feelings about the universe. Two months without a job, I revel in my unemployed freedom. On my 26th birthday I run across the Brooklyn Bridge to the Financial District and back. I have some cereal, and then a Miller Lite. The air is cold and I listen to a lot of U2. Later on in the night, I have a decent birthday with some friends at a dive bar in Greenwich Village. I get a Batman comic book from a friend, which I find very appropriate. I don't get wasted. I go to the Motherland to reconnect with my family after 13 years and to save my grandmother from the sun. I go cross-country. I spend a whole summer watching nothing but baseball games and blowing my stock options and going to shows. I come back and go on more road trips, train trips, live out of my suitcase at the drop of a hat. I come back East and go to the Hamptons to hide out in my friend's beach house. I come back and deal with all this New York crap. I wonder if anyone ever missed me anyway. I wonder if I ever really missed them, or if I should even care. I only had contact with one person while I was gone. I didn't care to speak to anyone else. Wonder why I still dress like I'm 22. Wonder what I thought my life was supposed to be like when I turned 26. Wonder how long it will be before I have to actually enter the workforce again. Wonder what it is I'm actually doing, and what it is I'm actually looking for and what the purpose was of all of that preceded. I grow lonelier. I hide it a lot better.

Age 27: The ex-boyfriend IMs me after not speaking to me for 9 months to wish me a happy birthday. I don't get why people wait until birthdays to pull stunts like this, do you? I end up going out with the co-workers at the new company. It's my fourth day of employment there. I don't get wasted. The guy I'm dating endures the snowy streets of New York to bring me back a betta fish, which he tucks into his coat and brings home via subway to my apartment, just for me. The fish is colorful and bright and I name it Andy Warhol. I slowly start having feelings for my ex again. Feel strange and confused as to how I got to be 27 in the first place. In an attempt to be a decent kid, I commute back home to see my parents, whom I've effectively blown off and not spent a birthday with in my 20s yet. I pass out early from exhaustion. Wonder why I'm still dressed like I'm 22 or why it feels like my mental development has been stunted. Wonder why I have a complex about not looking my age. Wonder if that's a good thing. Wonder if that's a bad thing. Wonder if it'll ever be different. Wonder if it'll ever be better. Wonder if there's anything else out there for me at all or if this is it. A month later, I get all obsessive-compulsive about changing the fish's water and Andy Warhol dies. I flush the fish. I flush the nice guy that got me the fish too, unfortunately. Yeah, don't you hate when girls go after the guys who've dumped them?

Age 28: I get dumped a day before my birthday over the phone. Isn't that some evil shit? I'm in California, and I lose my mind completely. Lose. My. Fucking. Mind. I'm 3500 miles from what seems like home, without my normal social network, and scared out of my mind. I'm awakened by phone calls at 6AM in the morning from the East Coast because no one is translating time difference too well. They say hello. I sound miserable. By 9AM, I've taken the day off. I was totally planning on going to work, but I ended up going back to bed because I'd spent a lot of the night crying. A buddy of mine had sent flowers to my desk for my birthday and I wasn't even there to enjoy them. Stupid day. Instead, I'd driven around in the California sunshine, knocking miles onto my new car, not knowing what to do. I drove to the Dumbarton Bridge and sat there for a bit in the silence. I drove back to my house, took a nap, and went back to work during the end of the workday to go out with some of my co-workers. Breakdancing and beer. No jokes. By the time my housemates came out to save me, I was thoroughly trashed and had to open up my housemate's car door in heavy traffic to barf while the other drove my car back to our house. Rock.

Well, golly. That was cleansing. Well, at least a woman's sexual peak is 30, and that's certainly something to look forward to... at least for me or whatever.

During my friend's 21st birthday party, I noticed that most of us celebrating were significantly older than him. The bulk of us had to be in our mid-to-late 20s or early 30s. I thought about what I was like at that age while sitting there with an Irish Car Bomb in my stomach and had a strange Donnie Darko moment. I thought of all the hope I was full of then, all the things I thought I knew in that moment, and of all the things I wouldn't really know about my life until later. It really freaked me out and made me happy for him at the same time, knowing that he was going to step onto the very same rollercoaster as the rest of us as his rite of passage.

Our innermost ideals and values are challenged in our 20s in such a way that we never thought possible. The things that we hoped and dreamed about and the things that we were perhaps most certain about in the early stage of our 20s, never really happen to be the case at all in our late 20s. I can't help but feel I've become angry and sad at the possibilities that are no longer a possibility. But maybe there's something to hope for beyond all that. Or, at least, I'd like to hope so.