First, a meditation on codependency:
You never expect to find yourself hunched over on a bathroom floor, still half-wearing a tweed suit now clinging to your neck, phone in hand, while nausea pushes up like a wave against your throat. You never imagined life would look like this.
There comes a point when you realize that love isn't something you can solve like a mathematical equation. You can’t rearrange the variables, hoping everything will balance out. It doesn’t work that way. You can’t flail your arms around in arid sand, watching it heave and collapse over the anxious animal of your body. You can’t pretend to be an hourglass and stop time, rework it until it tastes like crushed bay leaves and cinnamon. You can’t promise to be microwave-safe and then gild your edges with gold leaf, thinking that the heat won't scorch your skin.
Sometimes, humans will do anything to shave down a square peg to fit in a round hole. There, there, we say, that’s the life I want! The car I want to drive, the people I want to love, the grades I want to get. And then you're spending the last few months of being 19 drinking white wine alone in a Japanese restaurant as the radio drones on, reading the book you promised you’d check out, only to hate it, bringing a sketchbook everywhere like a little magician who’s forgotten how to pull a rabbit out of the hat.
But nobody is there to watch. The band plays on, the dancers spinning slowly under the soft, amber glow of the floodlights, their movements deliberate, unhurried. Two chessboards sit in front of you—one folded out on the bar table, flanked by $9 iced teas, and the other, the one you gave him, now abandoned.
Pawns lie toppled, unmoved, waiting for a game that will never be played.
♔♕♖♗♘♙
It’s your move now. There’s no grand gesture, just a quiet decision.
You shift the pawn to E4—an opening, something small, but it's yours.
It’s not about rushing toward checkmate, or building an elaborate strategy, but about starting again, about moving forward one square at a time. You don’t need to see the whole game yet; you just need to move.
I want to write to myself: You’ll spend the first few months of 19 expecting the world to hand you something grand, only to find yourself weighed down by the emptiness of material things. Week after week, you’ll buy something new—a shiny trinket, a pretty distraction—hoping that filling your life with objects will somehow fill the space inside you.
You’ll treat people like this too, as if they’re objects to admire but never fully understand, as if their purpose is to be consumed rather than seen. You’ll call yourself a psychopath because it’s easier than admitting the truth—that you’re afraid. Afraid of being seen, of needing someone in a way that feels raw, vulnerable.
And then, in those final weeks of 19, life will keep moving, unbothered. The waves will continue crashing against the shore at 10 pm, cold and rhythmic, their steady push and pull a reminder that the world doesn’t stop for anyone. You’ll stand at the edge of that indifferent sea, staring across the bay, wondering if anyone out there sees you, wondering if anyone’s looking back. You’ll wander into that dazzling city where the streets hum with the pulse of jazz escaping from half-empty bars, where lights flicker like forgotten stars. You’ll buy pastries, wear argyle socks, and you’ll introduce yourself to strangers, pretending for a moment that you’re someone else—someone new, untouched by the wreckage behind you.
But nobody will follow you into the tall grass, where the world quiets. The blades brush softly against your legs as you look up, searching the sky, the vastness of the Milky Way stretching above you. The stars are impossibly far, scattered across the universe like pieces on some cosmic board.
You never wanted to be this small. You wanted the world to mold itself around you, to answer your questions, to fold neatly into a pattern you could finally understand. But standing there, under that infinite sky, you find peace in the smallness. There’s freedom in it. The weight of being everything, of fitting into spaces you were never meant for, begins to lift. You start to realize—being everything isn’t the goal. Sometimes, it’s enough just to move forward, one square at a time.
Springtime in October:
Tomorrow, I’ll be 20. Another turn of the clock, another year folding itself quietly into my bones. The last decade feels swept away, dusted off like an old tombstone, the kind you pass in an overgrown cemetery and feel a pang of reverence for. There will be roses, gently unfurling on the bedside table, and cake tucked into the fridge, waiting in its own cool silence. If it rains, we’ll skip the beach. Maybe we’ll order Chinese takeout, the way New Yorkers do when the weather folds inward and the streets turn slick with rain. I’ll send out my signal to the world: I exist, I exist, I exist.
But there’s something about the weight of aging that pulls at you—a gentle tug as each atom in your body inches toward some inevitable center, a quiet slide into the universe’s yawning mouth. You think about your mother’s stories, how they no longer need to rise into arguments, just the soft telling of a life that’s lived beside yours. You walk through the woods, the late sunlight drizzling over your skin like syrup, and you remember your teachers, those few who saw something in you before you did. And then, like an uninvited guest, it hits you—how harsh you’ve been with yourself, how unnecessary it all was.
What do I want from 20? Less of me, more of everything else. I want people—real people, not so I can be known but so I can know them. I want to meet the scientists who lose themselves in petri dishes and data sets, the artists with ink-smudged fingers and wild imaginations, the older writers who look at me with knowing eyes and ask, What are you working on? I want to watch silly superhero movies because one of the actors makes me smile.
I want to be self-indulgent, pretentious even, and inhale life like it’s the thickest, sweetest cloud of smoke I can find.
I want to meet new people, not for the glory of being known, but for the quiet satisfaction of knowing them. The ones who care but maybe don’t show it, the psychology students who stumbled into their path. The researchers who moved the world by millimeters but still felt the shift. The wildflowers I pass by without thought, the sea, the sky, all of it. I want diner coffee, scalding and strong, and a sketchbook that’s never been touched. I want to be so kind that it spills from me, a quiet flood, like milk tipped over a kitchen counter.
For 20, I’ll say, enough of me. But I won’t disappear. I’ll keep doing the things I do, filling out my tasks with quiet competence, letting people know I’m open, that I’m here. I’ll take care of my skin, stretch my body, hold my head high. I’ll write the way I’ve always wanted to write, hike through forests, bake bread. But when I’m with people, I’ll give them all I have. I’ll listen, and I’ll ask. I’m not afraid anymore. I want to know what makes them tick, what keeps them going, and where they’re headed next. I’ll collect pieces of their lives, like stickers on letters from faraway pen pals—bits of Scotland, of Germany, and the lives tucked away there.
At 17, I was tired. At 18, anxious. At 19, hopeful. At 20, I’m ready. Ready for whatever comes next.
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