stargazing
Supposedly, 35 marks the beginning of middle age. I have no way to describe how I feel about this other than: the. fuck.
In an effort to “focus on the positive”, as they say, I am trying to remind myself of the very non-adult adult life I have, summed up by a list of absences: No mortgage. No car. No kids. No boss.
I should probably reframe this perspective, but this genuinely is how I take stock of my life. I still don’t have all the things I never wanted. It feels like the easiest way to live — total hypothetical freedom.
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I always knew I would have trouble growing old. Now I see I am also struggling to grow up.
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Last week, some happy flashes: on Thursday with L, eating popiah and gossiping as enigmatically as we could manage. After, we adjourned for ice-cream where we held hands and gave up talking in code. I told pb that night — all the important friendships in my life are marked by hours upon hours of conversation. And if we ever have our own place, I love you, but please go to bed so I can talk to my friends in peace.
On Friday night, a team dinner after work, followed by the third scoop of ice-cream I had had in just two days. I cannot help but hear my dentist’s voice every time I eat ice-cream now. “Maybe cut back on the ice-cream,” she said once after six months of stress-induced ice-cream bingeing had given me two new cavities. She couldn’t understand how it had happened, but I knew better. I was eating ice-cream in the middle of the day, late at night, after meetings and before.
R and I never finished our ice-cream. She took my half-eaten cone, and hers, and dumped it in the bin.
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T said once that it’s impossible to go out after breaking up with someone. You see them everywhere you go, think of them with every song, every funny little word you hear in passing. You can’t order the same dish without remembering how you used to split it. I found myself thinking about this on Friday, only with all the friends living lives I never imagined possible when we were kids.
— Thinking, here’s where you tripped and almost sprained your ankle. Here’s where we walked drunk and you threw up. Here’s where we met that creepy dude we probably shouldn’t have. Here’s where I was trying to convince you of an alternative life for yourself, without realising you knew what you wanted all along.
