Being 23.
Being 23 is wanting to bake your housemates a cake but the ingredients cost more than a bought one. It's the desire to throw away all your once beloved crop tops in a violent ploy for sophistication- but it leaves you feeling like an imposter. That bodycon dress that was there for you and supported you through all those years of adolescence and underage drinking, has also been cast out, like the school friends who once meant so much to you.
It's the pain of becoming aware that your mother was actually right- most of the time. Having a clean space and vacuuming in those areas where the guests will never find was in fact an act of love for yourself. It is an ongoing process of breaking and renewal, restructuring self-perceptions you once had and realising that some may not have even been yours. You realise you are a different person to everyone you meet and that there will be people who simply don't not like you. But there is a glimmer of excitement as your frontal lobe reaches full development when you realise- oh I actually don't care.
Being 23 is a broken record of contradictions. I want to read more, I want to get a big girl job, I want to be able to do the splits again, I want to make a difference in this world, I want to knit a scarf, I want to travel solo in a country you've never heard of and grow my bush so long I could plait it". It's the aspiration to do and be so much, and yet coming to terms with the fact that you won't actually get to do much of it.
It’s trying to establish a bed linen washing routine, remembering to water your plants and scheduling calls with your long-distance friends while trying to work out who you are without them attached at your hip. You spectate as others around you tie the knot, invest in the stock market (whatever that is) or buy a house while you hypothetically scroll through flight scanner with the search destination being "anywhere' to see how far your hard-earnt money could get you.
At 23 you may not have met love or you may have a strained relationship with her. You may be keeping her at bay, refusing to answer her knocks at the door or you may have had a falling out so bad- she has become the elephant in every room you're in. Or- she could be nestled up on your couch- now a permanent piece of furniture in your life. She's very ambiguous this girl.
The joy of grocery shopping when you first moved out of home has worn down by 23. Yes, you could buy the Yakults your parents never allowed and yes you could buy a whole ice cream cake just for fun- who is there to say no? But its not as special anymore and it has become too much of a routine. You know it isn't good for you and you know it's not a great investment. 23 is those second thoughts.
Thoughts that younger you never planned on developing.
23 teems with indecision, inner turmoil and identity crises. Its lonely, its exciting, its unknown. And yet I know every old hag sitting in the nursing home would kill to be me at 23- with no idea where, what or who I'm doing. So the beauty lies in being able to sit in the storm, and enjoy the show.