On turning 20

I turned 20 today. I’ve been adding and subtracting from this piece for a few months now as I’ve been reflecting on my past, my future, what I wanted to say, if my thoughts have any value. I still don’t know how I feel about it. It feels quite isolating, because even though people try to give advice and help you through, I’m turning 20 in 2023, which is a very different experience to someone who turned 20 even 10 years ago. Though the isolation I feel is one commonality between a lot of different ageing experiences. That feels like an oxymoron, how can you be isolated when everyone is and has and will experience the same feeling. Like saying change is the only constant. But it's still true.

I have a strange relationship with ageing in general. I’ve always been an “old soul”, feeling I was born 90. Every year I age, I feel closer to who I am inside, which should be joyous. While I do enjoy sudokus and knitting, I’m also very lost. I carry the traits of both the 20 year old and 90 year old. I know who I am, but I don’t know where I’m going. I like ageing because it brings me closer to being complete, a whole person. To reach the unknown age where I’ve experienced enough, learned enough, to be considered, good, whole, real. 

This feeling of not being a real person isn’t just a thing in my head, a lonely phenomenon tied to the pages of my red journal. It’s external too, and I’m tired of being treated like I’m not a real person. Talked down to. Disrespected. Seen as less than, because I’m young, I haven’t lived enough, learned enough. What would I know of life? Even when people know me, there's always a but. Something I haven’t got, some reason I’m less than. Even when I feel comfortable with my stage in life, there's always someone telling me I shouldn’t be. I’m not allowed to be okay, to be in a state of change, a river moving, I can’t be content in that. 

I don’t know if there will be an age I reach where people will finally treat me as a person, or where I’ll feel like a real person myself. Age doesn’t really define anything for me personally. Time is merely a construct, life feels more like a tarkovsky film. In my dreams I travel to the darkest parts of my subconscious and it feels as real as my waking hours, and I’m not convinced it isn’t “real”. I don’t know how to define “real”. Use it in a sentence. I don’t feel like a real person. I’m not 19, and I won’t be 20, those aren’t me. I’m not a girl anymore, not yet a woman. I’m me. So what does turning 20 mean?

I left girlhood a long time ago. Sometimes I’m afraid I never even experienced it. The transition from girlhood to womanhood felt violent, abrupt. Blood spilling between your legs, a razor taken to soft skin, sexual desires, a painful body growing breasts and hips and stomach. But the violence isn’t necessarily implicit. I imagine a world where we look at aging with wonder instead of disgust. Allow ourselves the freedom to explore our new reality, at our own pace. A gentler journey of growth. But this is not the world I live in. It's through outside forces that my journey turns violent. That I wake up one day, feeling the same as I did the day before, but the whole world is different. Womanhood brings an intense awareness, and you begin to perceive yourself and your place in the world in a new way. The strange stares of men older than your father, the casual cruelty of women you once admired. You learn what it is to be a woman in this world. A young woman specifically, a time when you have not learnt how to avoid stares, and not let things said get to you. You still desire attention and validation, and are weak to others' image of you as you have not yet concocted one of yourself. There is an androgyny to childhood that is taken away in a second. Femininity stops being a virtue and becomes a sin. To be born a woman is to be born wrong. You’re not a child anymore, even if your age still suggests you are. You are a woman, and you must act as such. You are an object, a sexual being. Through numerous violent acts at the hands of men, a girl becomes initiated into womanhood. You are pushed onto the tightrope and forced to walk the line of madonna and whore. What violence will this new age bring? 

I don’t recognise myself anymore. Not just in the mirror, my dysmorphia affects the mind as well. I don’t recognise my past self either. I have compassion for her. I’m glad I’ve changed, but I want to identify with the face in the mirror, with the girl in my head. I know myself too well, to the point where I’m sick of myself. Which doesn’t make sense because when I love someone, I love knowing every little thing about them, knowing what they will do, who they are, why they sleep on the left side of the bed, and how their eyes change colours in the light. Perhaps I just don’t love myself, so I can’t find beauty in the monotony of my mind. I’ve lived with myself for 20 years now, and it's exhausting. I have never been anywhere without myself. I must take along these heavy bags of my past, the weight of my mind, to every new place I go.

The character in my favourite movie is 19. She's lost and searching and so am I. Now I’m 20 must I lose that? What will I lose? Turning 20 means saying goodbye to girlhood, to my teen years. Once you’re 20 shouldn’t you know what to do? I’m not studying or working my way up in a career. I have no partner I’ll one day marry, no plans for children or a house. I know that supposedly most people don’t have life figured out in their 20s. There's a plethora of media all about that idea, I’ve read Sally Rooney, I understand I’m not alone in this. But New Zealand is different. Reality is different. There are these paths laid out for me, marriage, house, family, or study, career, money. But I don’t want either. I know what I don’t want, but not what I do. I wish I had at least goals for my future. Shouldn’t you at least have that? The media I see is, yes, about not having it all in your 20s, but your journey towards it. I don’t know what I want, so I have no journey to take. I’d like to be happy, be safe, I’d like to love someone and be loved. I’d like to see Europe. I’d like to go back to Mexico. But I want to do that for me, I have no ambition to be a travel writer or travel my whole life or anything like that. Does my lack of ambition make me a bum? A bad person? Lazy? I love writing and I’d like to keep doing that, I love teaching and I’d like to keep doing that too, but I have no goals within that, no greater heights to reach. Is this just a middle class white girl problem? Am I super annoying for complaining? 

I find it hard to think about the future, life is so unpredictable. I get this superstitious feeling like I’m jinxing myself, that all this misfortune is my fault, which probably just stems from feeling that I deserve it. Maybe I have OCD. Everytime I make a plan, it doesn’t happen. Sometimes they’re personal things like endometriosis or my mental health blocking my plans. Sometimes it's bigger things like a global pandemic. I feel like the future is completely out of my hands and so planning seems silly. But I do feel like I’m the silly one, that I need to get over this superstitious fear. It's hard to know what's normal and what I should talk to a therapist about. 

I’m afraid that by turning 20 I lose the permission to say I don’t know what I want to do with my life. To say I’m still figuring it out. Is this a symptom of the society? The idea that everything should be productive, every hobby monetised. I don’t want to do that, I don’t want to be productive. I write because I like writing, the same as I like knitting or reading books. I study things that fascinate me, I have no desire to earn certificates or degrees. In my experience people tend to regret the decisions they make at 20, so am I so wrong to not to want to make any? To wait until I decide on the rest of my life. I feel simultaneously behind and ahead in life. I just want to enjoy the ride. 

I have more to say, more to write, on girlhood and ageing, they’re things I think about a lot. I’ll leave you with this Sylvia Plath quote instead.

“I was supposed to be having the time of my life” - Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar