Slow down, you're doing fine

It’s around midnight, about a month before my 24th birthday. I’m walking with my partner and our friends from one busy bar to another, hopefully less busy, bar. Seattle summer is in full swing, and the streets of our typically grungey, queer neighborhood are full of people we don’t recognize, people with more money than us, with less style than us, with less reverence for the neighborhood that nurses and houses us, packed in popular bars with thick air circling the masses of bodies. We wander down the hill to a quieter part of the neighborhood—the strip of bars across the street from my partner’s job—with walls of dumpsters coated in rainbow tagging and splintered telephone poles thick and shedding with years of faded flyers. We’re talking about my upcoming birthday, a topic that I typically try to avoid unless someone else brings it up. I always feel a mix of coyness and vanity when it comes to my birthday. Yes, I do want to talk about a day all about me, but only if you bring it up.

“Oh, 24 is a good age! It’s gonna be a good year for you,” my friend tells me under thick lashes and sharp eyeliner. I ask her what exactly makes her say that, considering she only turned 23 a couple months ago. We swerve around some jerk riding an electric scooter on the sidewalk as she proceeds to enlighten me on astrology, planetary houses and the significance of 24 representing a refreshing, new start. A sigh of relief washes over me. Thank god.

23 has developed a contradicting balance of identity within me. On one hand, I’m establishing a deeper clarity for who I am and where I’m headed, but on the other hand, in this year I’ve experienced the deepest sense of insecurity I’ve had since adolescence. I’m confident with the direction I’m going in, but I’m still shaky about how to get there and who I want to be in the meantime. There is seemingly a parallel between these two stages of life, adolescence and early adulthood, based on the astrology my friend explained (and that I researched later). 24 represents the Jupiter return, a start to a new 12 year cycle, and is supposed to be a “golden year,” where the new start leads to a “deeper confidence in adulthood.” Since our astrological house cycles restart every 12 years, almost 12 year old Veronica and almost 24 year old Veronica were both standing on the ledge of something new—within ourselves and in the world surrounding us. (I turned 12 in 2012, when Americans thought the world would end, and I turn 24 in 2024, a year where it feels like the world as we know it is ending.)

I’m open and hopeful about the possibility of feeling more sure about my footing as an adult and a person in the next year. I’m still navigating my relationship with spirituality and only dabble with astrology at a basic level to feel validated by any semi-accurate interpretations of my chart, but at this point where I feel like I’m striding down a badly-paved road, I’m open to most sources of inspiration or advice. I try to let it soak through. For example, I’ve listened to “Vienna” by Billy Joel at least once a week for the last 4 months. I typically try to avoid this song—it reminds me too much of Jenna Rink from 13 Going on 30 reconciling with the mistakes of her adult life by returning to her childhood home and receiving guidance from her aging parents. Jennifer Garner crying in her childhood closet while Joel’s melancholy piano pokes behind her is one of the first scenes I remember giving me that stomach sinking, bittersweet sadness that often pairs with moments of life and understanding the pain that comes with those moments—a sensation I couldn’t quite comprehend while watching the DVD with my mom as a 6 year old. But at 23, walking around downtown Seattle with my headphones and self-defense keychain as my only companions, the lyrics pierce my skin with advice almost too resonant.

Billy Joel sings about an overachieving young person with their entire life ahead of them and all the fear of the future driving them to push and push and worry and worry. He serenades them with a “slow down, you’re doing fine.” As my boots hit the pavement, I shiver with each eerily accurate lyric, wondering if it’s this apparent to everyone else that I need to be more patient with myself. I feel inspired. I romanticize my position. I embody the young, ambitious protagonist of the early-20’s coming-of-age movie, where I will learn to trust the process and believe in myself! I let the clarity wash over me. I’m inspired to show myself some grace, to enjoy the little things in life, to go on long car rides and watch longingly as the scenery passes by!

Then, the second verse slides in and closes with a prudent “dream on, but don’t imagine they’ll all come true.” My motivation drops. No, Billy! They will all come true. I just need to work hard enough and never give up…right? I can make an impact! Everything is in front of me. I’m so close. My toes are in the water, and I will jump in one day. You’ll see.

Two days after my 24th birthday, I get a text from one of my bosses—a text I expected one day, but not so soon. I’ll be losing my job at the end of the month. Since my other job, the one in a creative field, doesn’t pay enough, I’ll have to go hunting for a second job, again.

A week later, I start a bath. I light a candle. I play a 2-hour “calming jazz” playlist from YouTube on my TV. I make myself some tea. I place The Picture of Dorian Gray on the edge of the bathtub. I lower myself slowly into the hot water. A text from my dad pops up just as I get into the bath. You should stop wasting your degree by applying for all these high school level jobs. I scrub my hands, dry and burnt from squeezing lemons, with a pumice stone, but it makes the tips of my fingers raw and tender. They burn as they tap on my phone screen, elbows deep in cherry scented water and an Indeed job search spiral. None of the barista jobs I applied for the week before have gotten back to me. Serving jobs expect 3 years of experience. School jobs require an education degree. There are no writing jobs. Dorian Gray remains on the side of the tub, and my cat looks up at me while resting on my pile of clothes.

I try to avoid the “my parents don’t understand me” or “they expect too much of me” sentiments because I massively overplayed this role in high school, and it’s much more complicated than that. Without the naivety of adolescence enabling my resentment, I can now empathize with the taxing effort and energy my parents have exerted for a stable, safe household and the talents that they saw in me and helped me develop.

While I don’t know much about my father’s upbringing and his transition from Mexican teenager to American citizen to American veteran, I understand the effort and the weight behind it. He doesn’t have to explain much for me to know that he’s endured life in ways that my younger siblings and I will never have to, and that he’s content with being able to provide security and opportunity for us. It’s in the way he hugs me when I visit home; it’s in the way he checks on me; it’s in his hopes of what I can accomplish. Through hard work, my family’s and my own, my goals are still accessible, even if it’s increasingly difficult to reach them. But success and accomplishment are starting to look different to me, and I don’t know if I can simultaneously find what I’m looking for and what he’s looking for.

The bathwater is lukewarm as I rub my temple, researching “entry level copywriter positions” and “how to be a copywriter.” I realize copywriting is just another version of marketing. I realize I will most likely have to go into something marketing-adjacent one day if I want to write for a living but look like I have a career, and I cringe. I don’t think I’m very good at selling things to people. I’m snapped out of my spiral when muffled wheels crunch over the asphalt outside as a car pulls in to the parking lot outside my apartment. Echoing outside my bathroom window, Cher’s auto-tuned voice blasts from open car windows with, “I can feel something inside me say, I really don’t think you’re strong enough!” I think I can hear the person in the car singing along, too. I giggle and finally stop for a second. I put my phone down and reach for my book.

I’m searching for some guidance, hoping to grasp the “deeper confidence in adulthood” that I’m supposed to gain this year with Jupiter’s return. I have a lot of maybes, for now. As I grow older and I work to cultivate the strong, powerful aspects of myself, I fear that the person shoved below all that developed confidence, intelligence and passion, the anxious side of myself that has always been obnoxiouasly overanalyzing and scrutinizing and overthinking, will remain prominent. That I’ll hide from the future, hide from the possibility, hide from my reality.

I always made fun of millennials for griping about “adulting,” but, here I am, griping about adulting. We’re no better than them, just more ironic. Adulthood is on my back porch, it’s here, it’s knocking on the door, but it also feels like a kite that keeps drifting with the wind every time I’m close to grabbing the string. I don’t know yet what adulthood represents to me, but I know that it’s nuanced. It can represent independence and knowledge—constantly learning, constantly changing, (hopefully) constantly improving. Getting older can be positive! It comes with an underlying assumption of wisdom and strength! These are the qualities that I aim to embody! But aging also feels like a threat! I fear a declining level of respect as I become an older woman and lose my youthful looks, charm, or whatever else it is women are told we “lose” as we age. I don’t want to surrender potential. I don’t want to be out of touch with culture and change (anytime I don’t understand an internet reference my 17 year old sister makes, I freak out a little bit). Right now the world is full of possibility, which is both enticing and terrifying.

When my mom turned 24, she had a one month old baby (me). Knowing as a child that my mom started her family around the age of 24, I always perceived 24 as the BIG ADULT AGE, where I’d be a hot woman with a good enough career and a good enough house and a good enough marriage. (I’m not sure where this assumption came from, considering my mom was a college student with a baby at 24 and did not yet have any of those things.) It’s a bit jarring to look back at my past perception of this age, at what was expected for previous generations at 24. I’m unsure how to navigate adulthood when there is no model for how to do so with the pressure of technology quickly changing the landscape of how we perceive the world and each other, along with economic deterioration impacting “typical” young adult landmarks (finding a job, not being in crippling debt, socializing, maintaining relationships, affording ANY kind of housing). This isn’t the first time that society has faced unstable times (it’s actually always happening) but now that everyone is connected and constantly aware of how connected we are, our understanding of that instability and our concepts of living are being reshaped and manipulated. We’re caught in the crosshairs.

I was at a meeting with my boss and our nonprofit’s accountant when the election and the future of our country came up. I’ve noticed it’s inescapable at this point, even when you’re talking about something unrelated, everyone is biting their tongue and tapping their foot.

“When we talk about the future, I’m mostly worried about you, and people your age,” the accountant says to me. I just nod. What is she worried about? Our safety? Our stability? Our ability to build a future out of whatever we’re able to gather? I don’t feel like I’m worth being worried about; there are people who need that worry more than me. It’s unnerving, to have someone you barely know be concerned about your future.

Of course, in classic millennial and Gen-Z fashion, we’ve made light of the difference in adulthood now from the past through thousands of iterations of the same meme I’ve seen go in and out of popularity since I was a teenager (see example below). Despite our concerning levels of desensitization and our habitual need to make a joke out of everything, I’m sometimes grateful to be able to find solidarity and make light of these feelings alongside thousands of other people just trying their best with what they have. We are constantly bombarded with reminders of the instability and turbulence circling around us, but despite the burnout, I still maintain faith in our ability to relate to each other, to encourage each other not to fall into despair and to show up and put in effort for what we care about. I’ve already seen it. I’ve grown up watching community build in unexpected spaces. Maybe we’re establishing our own path to being well functioning adults. Maybe it will start to look different.

(Thanks, boredpanda.com)

Billy Joel was just being realistic when he told me that the dreams won’t all come true, that only fools are satisfied. I know it’s delusional to believe that everything I set out to do in my youth will be fruitful, but I think a touch of delusion is necessary right now, for the sake of action and hope. Without it, I think more people would give in, and I think if I didn’t embrace it I would definitely be living life very differently—less passionate, less lively. It’s a privilege to be able to dream, even if those dreams don’t come true. Maybe that’s another level of maturation—learning that happiness can come from not achieving everything you set out to achieve, but trying anyway.

On my 24th birthday, I wake up at 6:30 AM and work from home for one of my jobs. I go back to sleep for a couple hours, then wake up to breakfast made by my partner. Eggs, with turkey bacon and toast. I call my family. My partner and I watch the newest episode of The Boys, and I laugh. We get boba and walk through the park. I meet up with my friends, and we ride a ferry to an island off of Seattle where we paddle board and swim and watch fireworks and laugh and drink and dance. The inevitable birthday melancholy kicks in at night after everyone else has fallen asleep. It sits on my shoulder when I turn to my side, a heaviness that squeezes my stomach. I anticipate change so deeply, want to feel it in every joint and every bone. I force myself to face it, to let it sink in. I breathe in the scoping possibilities for the year ahead of me. I force myself to acknowledge the capability within me, the limits I will try break this year, the sexiness, the confidence. Even if I don’t believe it. I’m stepping further into adulthood. I’m 24. I’m doing fine.

(Me, Cha Cha lounge, 2 days before my 24th birthday.)