“Wow, I’m turning twenty six in three months.” I murmur as I wait for the walk sign to turn on. “I’ll officially be too old for Leo.”
“What do you mean?” Elaine, my now ex-roommate / co-cat parent / best friend, looks up at me.
“You know, the whole thing about Leonardo Dicaprio only dating women under twenty five.”
“No, I know that. But the rule is under twenty five. You are already twenty five, babes. You’ve been too old.”
Shit. My jaw drops. Elaine shrugs. The walk sign beeps. We walk across the street to get our silly little $7 mid day coffee.
I am in my last days of my twenty-five. Twenty five just has a nice ring to it. It’s not the moody reckless twenty one or not the weirdly desolate and incomplete twenty three. (Prime numbers, amirite?) It’s a nice squared number, quarter way through completion. There was a “joke” in Korea when I was growing up, told exclusively by balding sleazy men in their forties, that women are like Christmas cakes. They hit their prime at twenty five and a day after that, they get slapped on a sickeningly orange 50% mark down sticker. Terrible joke. But at the cusp of my twenty five, I have to admit, that it does feel like I am officially retiring from some sort of youth. It is truly a weird feeling.
So to celebrate a full year of being too old for Leo, I decided to compile the questions I have in my life at this very specific window of my life. Some of them are excerpts from my diary entries. Some of them are questions I have for my future self. Some of them are just plain old questions — as questiony a question can get. Maybe one day — say when I turn thirty or fifty — I might come back to these questions. Maybe I’ll have an answer, maybe I’ll have the exact same set of problems. Who knows. But these questions will remind me where exactly I was at twenty five.
- Did we make it?
2. Sorry, that was kind of rude. How are you? Are you happy? Peaceful? Are you at an inflection point in your life? How are you doing?
3. Where are you? Did you settle down?
4. Memories are weird. For one, I remember my 2020 as — despite the obvious global panini or whatever shaking up everyone’s lives — a peaceful time. A period of my life I remember by the sweet nostalgia of making whipped instant coffee or the lemon scented Lysol spray by the doorway and the way we used to drench ourselves in those after our nightly walks around Evanston. I thought I was having a swell time back then until I read all my diary entries recently. She was angry, resentful, and lost. My anxiety was at its peak. So now I am aware of the mind’s trick where how I’m experiencing things at the moment could be wildly different from how I remember it. So how are you remembering this period of my life?
5. “Shit. Will I ever be at peace? Am I too obsessed with the things I lack in my life? Will I be happy once I have those things?” — from my diary entry from January, 2023.
6. How am I supposed to make new friends from now on?
8. How are you dealing with the ennui of the corporate 9 to 5? This state of post education with no concrete finish line or a big thesis to be written or a sick new gown at the end of the road. How are you dealing with the existential crisis that is — Is this how I am going to live my life forever until the day I retire?
9. Should I go to grad school?
10. In the end, are we doing all this just to be a little more loved by other people? Is this all about feeling a little less lonely?
11. Did you find “the one”?
12. If so, how can you feel so certain about that feeling? Does the notion of forever no longer scare you?
13. Oh yeah, how’s Taylor Swift’s Thirteenth album?
14. Is self-love a state of the lack of self-hatred?
15. Hypothetical situation. If money was not an issue (I know, ha, wild concept) what is it that I want to write about? What kind of art do I want to make? What is the essence of the thing that I want to write about? Why am I writing these twenty five questions and why do I feel compelled to share it with other people?
16. Yeah, why am I writing? Do I even like writing? Do I actually like writing or the act of “showing” my writing? I mean- if I enjoy writing I should be a writer but if I enjoy showing things off, I’d be better off being a — haha, get this — a shower. 🥁ba dum tss
17. Is my sense of happiness contingent upon my sense of competency? Is me being happy connected with me being sort of good at something and will I only ever let myself to feel happy when I am good at something?
18. Does it matter?
19. What stocks should I buy now? You don’t need to tell me the names, just drop some hints.
21. Did we solve global warming? Please tell me we solved global warming.
22. I try to recycle. I really do. I clean my to go containers and dry them. I bring them down to our wasteroom because our recycle chute just never works. And this morning I brought them down. A nice man was moving the garbage bins out. “Give me,” he says with a big smile. “It’s recycle.” I tell him. “Yes,” he replies. I hand him my bag of precious recycles. He tosses them over the general waste and drags everything out. I feel like I can’t say much here, between the “I know best” and “he knows better” and “Well, I tried.” and “Great, now all that’s going to end up in the landfill.” I feel as if none of my actions matter in the grand scheme of things as long as we are part of this enormous fucked up system. But I also feel terrible, feeling like I’m never caring enough because I don’t think I can ever be a vegan or I don’t finish my leftovers. Between all this, how are you keeping your head up? How do you keep your eye on hope when there’s so many reasons to be hopeless?
23. Does it get better?
25. Am I the best version of myself?
