Your Life Isn't Over, You're Twenty Three

I’m supposed to be writing.

Instead, I grip the sink and heave gasping breaths, head bent to avoid my own reflection. If I look up I’ll see myself standing there, doing nothing, being nothing. I heave in, heave out. And each heavy breath is another second lost.

What am I doing? Time is slipping away. I stumble from the bathroom, sit at my desk and stare out at the vines that hang over the window. I should go out and trim them back, so more sunlight can get in. Spill over my hands as they tap, impatiently, over the desktop. Restless, moving. I should be doing something. I get up to trim the vines back. The sun is so warm as it soaks into my skin; the smell of the garden, the buzz of a bee as it passes me by. I close my eyes, tilt my head back. And for a moment. I can just be.

I am not me. I am not twenty three. I am not an aging being. Not touched by time. I am a tree, growing roots deep into the ground. Touched by the wind, nudged by a bee. I am a flower, a vine. I am grass, the dirt. I am the sunlight.

I open my eyes. A butterfly dips toward the garden bed of strawberries, rests on the flowering plant. What is time, to the butterfly? To the strawberries. To any of it.

I wonder what is it, that makes me feel this way. Where has this pressure come from?

My ten year old self, I think. The little girl who wrote stories into the late hours of the night and dreamed of my older self. As old as twenty. That’s how far my mind would go. Twenty and smiling at a camera, my bestselling novel held up in one hand. How much fun I would have, older but young, beautiful, telling stories, travelling the world, all lean legs and long hair, the picture of success.

I think that was the problem. Success can come at any age, yes. I knew that. But I was stuck on this thought; that it was only when I was young that I could enjoy it. How much fun could I possibly have if I was successful at sixty, travelling the world not quite as beautiful, my legs not quite as lean, hair not quite so long?

At twenty three, heaving, bent over the sink, that thought still plagues me.

I’m running out of time. I need to be successful now. I need to accomplish something. To write a book, to travel the world, to be young.

Do it now before you’re old. Old. OLD.

That word like a curse in my head. Like something tainted, shameful, something to be unsaid.

I trim the vines back. The tree in my front yard bows its head to me. I wonder how old it is; what it has seen. Was it here, as strong and tall, before this house was built? Did it see the paving of the road, the sweat on the backs of the construction workers, the way they wiped their brows and called out to each other? How many children has it seen, riding their bikes down the street, laughing, shouting, pulling their hands from the handles? Has it seen those same children grow, age, walk along beside it years later, with a dog on a leash, a baby in a pram?

All those skies it has seen, all those stars, those moons. Flowers and birds and faces.

Age seems so beautiful when it belongs to the trees. I wish I could wear it just as beautifully.

Oh, my little ten year old self. Always causing problems.

But I am twenty three now, and I don’t have to think the same way. I can take all that pressure away, trim it back, let the light in.

I know so much more now, at twenty three. I know can see deep wisdom, beauty, in the trees. I couldn’t see that at ten years old. What is it that I can’t see now, that I will see at thirty? Forty? Sixty?

I hope I’ll see that each heaving breath isn’t another second lost. That I don’t need to panic that I’m losing time, then panic at how my panic is losing time.

I hope I’ll see success and enjoy it. I hope I’ll see that I can enjoy life without success.

There is far more light over my desk when I go back inside.

I sit down and write.