Help, I’m Turning 27 and I’m Starting to Think Through My Life Choices
I used to be young and hot, and now I’m slightly less young and still hot. What’s a girl to do?
Look at me, a slightly larger shell of the former shell I just was a few years ago. I was a New York darling. A Joyface Baby, a published writer in the Dime Square newspaper (don’t bother looking it up, it was print only, you ANIMALS). I could drink heavily and not think about the hangover I’d get the next morning because the next morning would come without the intermission of rest. I was a champion. Bold. Brash. Insufferable. But so, so, so.
There’s a certain magic in the years between 21 and 25 when you’re unable to think of anything but five years ago or ten years from now. You still kind of feel like the child who’s been let out of the house, but there’s no more fear surrounding contacting your friend’s ex’s drug dealer. Not that I have. It’s like if life were a marathon, your early 20s would come with a handicap: You’d be given a blindfold with a pinhole pointed toward the finish line, and then you’d be shot up with so much ecstasy you’d think you were being reamed by a unicorn and enjoying it.
The thing is, that doesn’t exactly feel like a handicap, it doesn’t even look like one if you have a strong enough sense of direction or a severe fear of unicorns. Early 20-year-olds can move fast— faster than nearly any other age group. The real question is “Fast…. to where?”
When I was in my early 20s, it was peak COVID. A drag, I’d thought, although in hindsight, a saving grace. Had I the full five years to do my damage, I, nor the world, would have come out whole. As it stood, my early 20s started closer to 23. I’d moved back in with my parents from my apartment in Cambridge (already a blow), and I began what would come to be called the “year of living dangerously.”
Ah, to be 23 again and drinking extra liquor from glasses that were not mine at the end of a night at a club I’d been to one because— why? oh yes, I’d been dared to, and I was not, nor am I now, a little bitch. Ah, to bask in the light of the 7 AM sun as I walked my pretty ass home over the brooklyn bridge. AH! What bliss as I, frequently and without care, entered cars with strangers and attended afterparties at secondary locations because my friend said it would be, and I quote, “a vibe.” What a gay little life I led, walking death, disfigurement, and probably black market organ sales on a leash dangling from my well-manicured fingers. Suddenly, I understand those weirdos who keep tarantulas as pets; I was the weirdo AND the tarantula. The very danger to myself.
And now— NOW— look, it’s not like I ever did the cocaine for the sake of my mother, but at least there used to be a girlish tickle in the back of my head that giggled gigglingly at the notion of being oh just so bad for being tempted before I shook my head no. Now I just think about how it’ll interfere with my ADHD medication and how the chemical makeup isn’t really that different (because I’m the woman you should trust on chemistry, I said, sarcastically, trying to remember how many legs the periodic table stands on).
FUCK! I’ve grown so grown so fast. I buy those little hangover prevention drugs at Whole Foods and I know they work. Paint me with chalk and place me in a garden, I’m only good now as a relic. Twenty-seven— there’s naught that comes next. Thursday, that’s the day. The Thurs. the fateful.
I don’t know what brand of bitch I’ll be, I don’t know how this… transformation will matastisize. I might learn how to spell matastesize. I might start a windowsill herb garden. Or meal prep. I might say things like 401K and IRS in public. 26. 26. 26. 27.
