All the cool images were taken by the amazing Habari studios.
1. Now I’m 27 staring at a kid in the mirror and all I do is wonder if (s)he’s proud of me.
It is 2024. I am scrolling through Instagram and on a reel I cannot in this moment remember, I hear a snippet of Old by Sam Opoku and know immediately I must look it up on Spotify. I lie like a starfish in my bed, stark naked and close my eyes as it replays on repeat doing something visceral to my soul. For all intents and purposes I … Transcend? I am me but I am not. I am all elements of the song at once. They strike me somewhere raw. I hear this lyric and I know in two years, if I remember, I will use it as a caption on my birthday. I feel the weight of getting older, of time passing and clocks ticking and I cry and I cry and I cry until I sleep.
2. Happily ever after, why don’t I see it happening.
In what could be classified as cynicism, I do not believe I am built for happiness – at least not in the romanticised sense people talk about it. From as far as I can remember the odds were stacked against me and happiness has always been an elusive dream that I cannot comprehend.
The things that would have put my soul at ease are unattainable and that realisation has compounded the more the years have gone. I do not say this in a “woe is me type of way.” I say this as a fact.
And I think that’s fine. I’ve already grieved a life that I now know I shall not have. I am too young to be grieving such a thing, but when would be old enough if all I’ve been doing my entire life is holding on when I should have really been letting go.
3. Broken promises made me this way, but I swear I wasn’t always numb and indifferent.
The other day, my friend saw my staff ID with a picture that was taken four years ago of me smiling. I’m always making a running joke with my ID that you can see the steady progression of the light leaving my eyes with every ID photo I take. Case in point is the staff one that’s hanging from my rearview mirror. It’s a bright picture of my bright face with a bright smile on a bright day when I had just gotten this bright job.
Him: You are smiling so widely ngati zeni zeni.
Me: I wasn’t that tired back then.
Him: Yes you were.
Me: Ya, you’re right. But I still had so much hope.
Silence.
4. With life’s lemons I made lemonade. Does it still taste the same if I mix it with some Hennessey.
To be fair, though, I think all my life I have been miserable. When I go through my memories and my journals and all the emails I send my mailing lists, I am always surprised that every couple of months I am left somewhere deep and dark. Angasa used to like to call it “dark night of soul.” I don’t fully know what that means but I am sure I have felt it all my life. It’s crazy because externally I have gotten over it all. I have crawled myself out of the deep dark place more times than I can count and built something beautiful out of the debris – brick by effing brick.
I am not that ungrateful that I fail to acknowledge that I have a good life for the most part. A life I have fought for. A life I promised my younger self I would give her. A new life I hopefully never have to grieve. A safe life. One as soft as I can make it. Randy Pausch would be proud because though I definitely could not change the cards I was dealt, I did change how I played the game.
And yet?
I both simultaneously feel like it is a lot but not enough still. I do not know what will be enough to escape this hollowing feeling in my chest that threatens to swallow me whole.
5. But there’s still some time to build us a sandcastle inside of this hourglass.”
Despite everything I just said though – fuck, do I like getting older.
You cannot pay me enough money to be a kid again, though I’ll admit, I do miss not having to pay bills. But I’d sooner take these responsibilities than trade it for the wretched helplessness I felt as a child.
6. They say the older you get, the wiser you are. I should be wiser by far.
Sometimes I think I’ve ship of Theseus-ed myself too close to the sun – replaced each plank of my being with something I almost recognise but not quite.
Ten years ago I was definitely more sure about the choices I was making and the direction my life was going. I am less certain of things now. Adulthood has been a series of unlearning and relearning.
Age has stripped me down to my barest of bones. Taken everything I thought I knew about living, loving and losing and flipped over its head.
I thought by now I would feel settled into myself. Thought I would have arrived somewhere close to a version of me that made sense. Instead, I feel like a frankenstein’s monster, but made up of versions of myself that no longer speak to each other.
Heaven definitely knows I’m a mess.
But maybe the passing of time is less about figuring it out than it is about about enduring it – shaping it where you can, and surviving what you can’t.
7. Maybe I’m sick and tired or maybe I’m just getting old.
I have known life has teeth for a long time. It has had it’s teeth in me for as far as I can remember. It bites at my skin. Grinds my bones. Sucks off the marrow.
I’m convinced, all living ever does is take. And it continues to take from me. In most all of my journals, there’s always an entry that says “something in me is leaking and I’m afraid one day it will leak out completely.” Or something to that effect.
I feel like I’ve been running with earth around the sun. But I’m starting to see that turning any age feels that way and the compounding effects just keep going. A year is a long time to grow even more tired.
As time goes, the future seems less like one of infinite possibilities and more like checklist of things other people want and so perhaps I want them too. Like a PhD. My own house. A pet probably.
I’m starting to wonder if I’ve always been like this. Have I ever wanted anything grander than this exact life I’m living?
Turning 27 is such a tired thing, beloved.
Maybe a spark in me died.
Or maybe I’m just getting old.
