This month I’ll turn 24.
I know that I will likely remember this age and say “God I was so young!” Only, that doesn’t help me right now. Right now I feel old. I feel the pull to turn to people older than me and attempt to find solace in this new feeling. Yet when you feel old at a young age adults mock you, despite the real crisis that occurs in twenty-somethings, to say you aren’t really old. But to 23-year-olds like me, 24 is old. This is the first old age I’ll ever turn. I wish someone might extend some understanding when it comes to topics of getting older. For young people there comes a point where though we know we are young we are aware that a life has occurred, and will continue to occur, and we have to be part of it. In a way, we often feel life has vanished, ended, passed right before us because indeed a lifetime has.
Last year, my birthday was one week after New York City shut down. When I found out my school was closing I sat with a teacher crying because I was sad and scared. Somehow we began to talk about age. I said I was 22, then counted in my head 23, 24.
“I’ll be 24 when I graduate,” I said finally, almost exclusively for myself.
Three semesters to graduation was impossibly close while 24 felt increasingly far. The perspectives didn’t match. I was still trying to get to 23. And a few weeks later I did, but sometimes it was hard to feel I’d aged when the world was at a halt. Yet I was happy to no longer be 22. I love the fresh even tone of a new year.
Only what I found was this new age had its own disappointments. After my birthday a concert scheduled for July 2020 was moved to October 2021. On the phone, with my therapist, I tried to explain to her why I felt so devastated.
“By the time I’m at this concert I’ll be a different person,” I said “I could be in grad school, have a job. And I’ll be 24.” This age was somehow feeling further away, but closer to me all at once. Enough wonderful moments were starting to exist there it became like a mirage. I felt I might be waiting to reach it for the rest of my life.
My therapist only hummed a bit, “you talk a lot about age, it means a lot to you.”
Which is true, age fascinates me. Most people say they don’t feel different on their birthday, I am acutely aware of the difference between one number from the next. I have copious feelings surrounding each: 21 was magnificent, 22 was a horrible cruel joke, 23 was a relief. 24 feels like a lifetime. As I said I’m aware that I have an entire life behind me, but I’m more aware that there is also a life before me. I am neither the person I was when I began college nor the number of people I will come to be. My friend’s boyfriend said to her when she was crying with anxiety “life is so long.” We laughed about it after, but I’m seeing what he is saying now. Life is in fact long and though I know I have to do many-a-wonderful things, and though I want to do them, I have no idea of how they will happen.
Truly, what I’m saying is I’m afraid. I’m afraid of the things I never thought to be afraid of. I’m not afraid of getting old. I’ve read articles titled “What’s actually Good About Getting Older” because I look forward to it. I’m afraid of how it feels to be here, knowing that I have grown, over and over, for 23 years and my life is not likely even halfway through. But for some reason, I feel there is an imaginary clock somewhere counting down and I can’t see the numbers, but know it’s close to zero.
What will the zero bring? In my head, it doesn’t bring the end of my life, but something magnificent. I don’t feel my life won’t be extraordinary, but my adolescence will forever seem a bit unremarkable. I’ve fallen trap to the idea of how good it is to be young. We are meant to be doing something with this part of life where we are more than likely incapable of doing anything. When I was younger I had hardly any money, connections, or energy to devote myself to the idea of “coming of age.” Life isn’t over, but something is, something I can’t put a name to. Perhaps it’s merely the illusion. The smoke and mirrors have been revealed and the joke is, it was all life: the shit jobs, the going to college, the bad boyfriends, the nights I went home early from the bar, that was my life happening, and I hardly remember it.
Perhaps too the fear young people have is this new freefall we are in. Anything could happen, it could go either way, love, careers, apartments, time. How strange it is to feel the tension of a rug that could be pulled from beneath us. I could make plans for a first date with the man I could marry tomorrow. Neither better nor worse, however, I could also date five guys and marry none of them. There is something uneasy and new here, I have never felt old enough to need to comprehend forever.
Above this low hum of anxiety I find, despite it all, joy. Apart from what I have said I have been told to have fun with everything, dating, careers, life, art. It is a fun age. I love birthdays, my therapist was correct, age has a unique weight. This is something that’s always been hard to describe, but I can hear a song or even feel a temperature outside my window, and feel a visceral shift to specific ages. There is an accumulative average and tone to all the numbers I have been and I recognize all of them when we bump into each other, even if I don’t remember everything that happened between us.
It’s easy for me to see who I was about a year ago. I’m older now, different. When I first moved to New York the most adult and dreamy thing I could think to do was get a table outside for dinner. It’s winter now, but I’ve enjoyed plenty of lunches with friends in the place I imagined adulthood to be. A year ago it never occurred to me I wouldn’t want to live with my sister and now I bookmark apartments where I feel sufficiently prepared to live alone. I also did the thing I thought I’d never be the one to do this year, I picked out my dream wedding ring. Life is so long. Though I don’t know what’s going to happen it’s fun to have a say in what I get. You see each age to me is so different, I can’t imagine not noticing.
Now I’m here, at the brink of an age I thought would always be so far ahead in the future. March will keep rolling and I will turn 24. I feel the invisible clock ticking. Whatever is ending I wish it well. The ideas I carried in those ages are useless to me now. I’m not sure what I wanted to happen as a teenager, the extraordinary life I imagined only happened in those years, but I’m no longer opposed to it happening later. Anything worthy of the word remarkable will likely remain so at any age. The books I publish, the photos I take, the vacations I have. There will now always be an awareness of the two lives within me. The one that happened and the one ahead. I can’t do anything about that, but sometimes it’s nice to feel the difference, to feel a draft blow in my window, and remember being 17 home from school. Or even when the time comes, I’ll hear a song at the canceled concert I got tickets for when I was 22, and remember 22 to think God, I was so young.
It’s true in some perspectives I am old. My panic as I said, is valid even if there are people in the world older than me. Aging is uneasy, but what has unraveled isn’t life, it’s adolescence. I kiss it farewell and look forward to finding out what it really feels like, this age. 24! You tremendous thing, you colossal beast. How nice it is to finally meet you.
I saw this about a week after I finished my column. Didn’t submit the question but wish I had a subscription to read the answer. Some helpful tips before I hit the big two-four
The few moments where I want a hug but know I can’t have one because no one is around.
Frosé from The Grey Dog.
The chilly air of a mid-spring night on a post-dinner walk.
Big, impractical, colorful sunglasses.
Blisters on the top of my feet.
St. Marks Place on the last warm day before needing a fall jacket
The Financial District on a Wednesday
The NYC ferry
Chuck and Blair’s wedding (Took me 23 years to finish gossip girl)
Dirty Dancing
The quiet of my apartment on a summer morning when I’m the first one awake
Waking up early to do school work in my childhood home for the first time in years.
Upper lip sweat (from the masks)
Cherrys, strawberries, and pomegranates.
The B43 bus
The never-ending incline at the start of the Williamsburg bridge in the Lower East Side
1 AM on a summer night riding the last J train to Brooklyn
Dolly Alderton’s writing
The brief and momentary clarity of realizing how useless dating apps are
Salads with avocado
Summer Solstice
The relief of seeing someone you haven’t seen in oh so long.
“I carry you with me like sunspots, your brightness left a mark on me.” 12:37 am February 18th, 2021.
I didn’t do anything with this because I was worried I sounded too angsty and melodramatic.
March, as much as it is a month, is also a verb. To march meaning to walk or proceed quickly with determination. To proceed or advance inexorably “time marches on” another example given by the dictionary. Strange, time moved onward without pause until a year ago. Time as far as we knew it seemed to stall. Until now— you see people are saying “it’s March again.” It is March again, but that will always be true. It will be March next year, and the one following, they will likely continue to pass us. This March brings a year of a deadly pandemic, it’s somber to be sure. Yet, on the other hand, it will be March again. There will be an end and there will be another March to renew our lives in our favorite places. We will reclaim the things we miss dearly, greet the people we haven't seen, eat dinner indoors, see faces. Time marches. Time must be unyielding because it's the only thing which really brings change, healing, age. Time must move forward; we'd likely never choose to on our own. We need hindsight and growth and space to do it something only time allows. It is March and we can mourn it, but look beyond it too. There is an end that we are marching to.
As always my mood board awaits you here. I tried to make it extra big and wonderful since March really drags on.
Much like 24, March can go either way. I’ve worn sundresses on my birthday and then the next year watched it snow. The one wonderful thing about this month, if you pay attention, is the life. It hints at its arrival. Then before you know it it's April and you start to think you may just have made it through the winter. But I hope like me you find a daffodil or Crocus and take a second to think you’re glad you made it even this far too.
That’s all this month! If you enjoyed the little conversation we had let me know! Save +share your favorite parts and tag @chloeinletters
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My Goodreads where I sometimes write reviews but keep updated is right here where more of my library is contained as far as books go.
My website is where you can check out my portfolio and contact me
My email, if you want to cut to the chase, is letterstochloew@gmail.com where you can let me know what you think or ask me a question about what you saw here!
Here’s to marching forward, birthdays, time, and Starbucks Fridays.
love always,
Chloé
Great read! I turned 29 recently having been 27 at the beginning of Covid. I think this acute consciousness of the transient nature of life is exacerbated by the current situation where people's lives are on hold but time continues to tick.
i remember crying so hard i threw up around 12:15 am in a summer camp bathroom stall on my 12th birthday,, and this wonderful little letter made me feel a little nicer about it and the worries i had then, esp since im going into my twenties in july! another thing, when i was about 14ish, i followed a lovely writer called chloe on tumblr and im so glad to have kept my digital connection going :) this is my first newsletter of many and im looking forward to the rest!