I realized everyone could see me. No number of times I kept my head down or my door shut or my phone on do not disturb or my opinion out of the conversation constituted my absence. In an uncanny valley sort of way: I graced my own perceptions just as alarmingly. As yippie as it sounds, this felt like the year I realized I was a person, with expectations, with a place in the world (no matter how uncertain I was about this particular notion), and with something more than work to give. And although that actualization was freeing, it came to be incredibly daunting for a person like me, who, given enough evidence, has spent her life assuming she didn’t have much to offer.
A lot of my identity was turned on its head. A lot of the ideas I have about myself and the ideas I projected that everyone else had of me came to be challenged, both in willing and unwilling ways. I could tell you all of the ways I felt short of change, but at the end of the day, that approach is lip service. The true challenge was proving to myself I had, have, and will have the grit, the mental toughness, the gall to work through anything thrown at me. And for some time, I couldn’t believe it. I didn’t. Even though, evidence withstanding, I had indirectly proven that I had every tool in my toolbag to turn myself into a liar. Even so, I seem to permanently reside in this space in time that I can feel time moving around me and I’m growing self-conscious of it. I’m both shedding the ever-evolving version of me and cresting the hill of whoever waits for me on the other side. Truthfully, I don’t think we ever stop evolving. And I’m entirely too familiar with the “when I do this…” technique of thinking. So, the logic of shedding and climbing seems so flawed, and yet here I am, present, in between it, with my value tucked in my pocket.
I’ve always carried my ability to “be valuable” as a condition. The ifs and whens always got in the way of feeling valued as a human being. And even then, if I felt there was value in my relationships, I always had it in my head that there was someone else who could give that friend something I couldn’t. If I felt there was value in something I created, I seldom felt confident enough in it to give it any worth. If I felt good running a mile and only stopping twice, I was foolish to think I could keep up with someone who didn’t stop at all. If I felt I was in a good position to make a change in my life, I immediately recognized someone younger than me who had already done that.
The most resounding lesson for me in 2023 was, by far, that nothing is truly original. As the biggest critic of myself, my work, and my relationships, this was a necessary lesson for me to start intentionally taking up space as an immutable human being. I could feel like I’m not good enough to write, but if Stephen King and Rupi Kaur can both have the title of writer and not be anything alike in their crafts, statistically there’s room for me. I could feel like everything I make has to be original to be captivating, but knowing poet Cecilia Knapp named her TedTalk “Why I Write” after essayist Joan Didion’s piece called “Why I Write” which was admittedly taken from novelist George Orwell’s essay entitled “Why I Write” eases my nerves to be totally original, mainly because it’s entirely impossible to do so. I have seen my own nose in photos of generations of women before me and still disliked how I look but would never speak to them the way I speak to myself. The reasons I’m in therapy are the very things that I find interesting in conversation with other people but make me feel like I’m throwing myself a pity party when I talk. I’m not the first person in the world to experience all of these things, but it is my first time experiencing these things as a person in the world. And there can be a lot of value in that naivety.
As I enter the final full year of my twenties, the future has never felt so elusive. Not entirely in a mortality way, though it’s not far from my awareness in that aspect, but in a way that goals have never felt less evident. Ambitions haven’t ever felt more uncertain. I don’t think I’ve ever felt less clear of my path. I’ve always been told, “your thirties are the new twenties.” I hope my lack of ideal is just part of the permission slip I subjectively signed when I started believing that my twenties don’t hold conscious significance.
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