Dear Alex

The final days of my twenties are quickly closing in, moving shockingly fast and excruciatingly slow at the same time. I can tell you that 29 hasn’t gone at all how I expected it - which has been both a blessing and a curse, depending on the circumstance. I’d been planning on celebrating my 30th on Kilimanjaro, but, ah … life. With all that’s going on, I actually have no idea how I’ll celebrate this year. I have plans, but, I’m trying not to get too attached to them. I know people are dealing with WAY worse, but, it still sucks and I admittedly don’t handle disappointment well.

However, this post isn’t about all that.

It’s, as writing always is, a way for me to reflect and process upon one decade of my life and to accept a new one. So, I’ve decided to write a letter to my twenty-year old self, focusing on what I’d say to her if I could. This may be the longest post I’ve ever written. It’s certainly the most personal.

Now enough with the disclaimers.

Dear Alex,

Just wait until I tell you about 2020. It’s WILD. Actually … maybe I shouldn’t ruin the surprise. Instead, let me give you a head’s up on a few of the big lessons you’ll learn on your path to thirty (most of them the hard way).

People are not perfect.

This one seems obvious, but trust me, it’s not. You spent a lot of time in your teens looking around and wondering how everyone else is so perfect. Perfect hair, perfect clothes, perfect boyfriends, perfect social life. Unfortunately, that is only amplified in your twenties. Because now, not only are you still surrounded by these seemingly perfect people, you’re also an “adult” now - and there’s a lot of pressure to be a perfect one.

Perfection isn’t attainable by any human, but I’m going to focus in on some very particular humans for now.

Speaking of “perfect,” one of the biggest - if not the biggest - lessons that you will learn in your twenties is that your parents are just people. They’re human. They are most certainly not perfect. This is going to sound strange to you at twenty. You’ll think you understand what I mean. You don’t. You really, truly don’t. And that’s okay. There are a few things that will have to unfold for you to fully grasp this, and it’s going to be very hard. You’re going to get angry. You are going to have to grieve the cookie-cutter versions of them you’d made up in your mind. This won’t be a painless.

Actually, it’s life altering. As a very simple analogy, it’s like taking off polarized sunglasses and looking out over the water on a sunshiny day. It fucking hurts at first. Your eyes will burn and water. It will be hard to focus. You’ll want to put the glasses back on. But when you get used to it - damn - the colors are so much more vivid. Real. Alive.

As a child, we put our parents on pedestals that they never asked to be on. We assume that they always have the answers and that they won’t make mistakes. But that’s not fair. You never really know what someone else is going through - even the people closest to you. Sometimes, especially the people closest to you.

Your parents are people, flawed and still trying to figure things out day by day. Accepting this will allow you to understand your relationships with them better, stronger, deeper. Also, as a strange side effect, this realization will allow you to take some of that pressure to be perfect off of yourself. Because while sometimes it still does seem that the people around you are living perfect lives, knowing that deep down, we’re all fucking up, is actually … perfect.

You have to love yourself first.

The hardest part of this one is that it can’t be checked off your to-do list and never thought of again. You’ll have to work on loving yourself - sometimes even simply liking yourself - everyday, sometimes multiple times a day … until forever. Some days you’ll do better than others. Other days you’ll fail - big time.

You were twelve when you got your first stretch mark on your stomach. By 16, you had many more to add to that. There’s not a day that goes by in your teenage years that you don’t think about your body and what’s “wrong” with it. You’ll have days when you get so angry at yourself. You’ll spend countless hours hating your body, and in turn, hating yourself. This doesn’t change much in your early twenties. In fact, it' actually get worse for a while.

I can’t imagine that it’s much different from what other girls go through - we’re taught to pick apart our bodies - but it feels very lonely and isolating. It’s easy to let ourselves think that we’re alone in our own suffering. Unfortunately, I don’t have a fix for this.

There will be parties that you refuse to attend at the last minute because you’re “sick” or “tired” when really you tried on every piece of clothing in your closet and decided that you looked too big or ugly or wrong to go out. There will be shopping trips you back out of because you know that the sizes are too small in the boutique your friends want to shop at. There will be Halloween group costumes that you refuse to be a part of because you think you’ll be the DUFF - designated ugly fat friend. There will be nights when you feel so confident and pretty and good, only to show up at the event and think that in comparison to everyone else around you, you’re dull. There will be many compliments that you refuse to believe are true because there’s no way someone could possible think that you are beautiful. To be honest, even now it is still very hard for you to take a compliment. (Author’s aside: Please, dear reader, don’t take this as me fishing for compliments. In fact, if you’re taking this that way, I’m sorry to inform you that you’re completely missing the fucking point).

And wait - there’s more! You aren’t just insecure about your body. Especially in your twenties - you’ll become more and more aware of your personality flaws. FUN STUFF! But really, as you enter into the professional world and as you become a bit more settled into who you are, you really become hyper focused on two constant, nagging questions: Am I too much? Am I not enough? You will ping-pong these around over and over again. Am I too aggressive? Too dramatic? Is my laugh too loud? Am I showing enough drive? Am I smart enough? Am I putting in enough effort? It’s never-ending, and it’s exhausting. You’ll apologize for who you are over and over and over again in your twenties. Each time is like adding a brick to a wall around your true self, and brick by brick, you start to dim your light. You usually don’t even realize you’re doing it - it’s either reflexive or defensive.

Whether it’s physical or mental, every single day your mind will think of a new and creative way to convince you that you’re not enough or that you’re too much. I’d like to tell you that by thirty that goes away, but I can’t. You won’t fully grow out of the insecurities and the tendency to self-sabotage.

But here’s an ah-ha for you: you ARE too much sometimes and you ARE NOT enough sometimes, too. That’s the fucking point of being a human. Once you accept this instead of fighting it, life will be much easier.

And - the most important thing - I will tell you what you do learn to stop doing by 30 - and this is GOOD so listen up: you stop letting your insecurities control you.

Eventually, you’re going to figure out that nobody cares as much about your body as you do. You’re going to figure out that life is worth living no matter what you weigh. You’ll truly understand that swimming in the ocean, laying in the sunshine, is so important to LIFE - and It. Doesn’t. Fucking. Matter. whether or not you do that in a bikini, a one-piece, or a freaking potato sack. What matters is that you do it. You’ll go to the parties, you’ll kiss the cute guy at the bar, you’ll wear the short dress - because you CAN and you SHOULD and the only thing that should stop you from doing any of those things is a damn global pandemic (spoiler alert: that happens). You’ll laugh as loud as you want because it feels good. You’ll be dramatic about things you care about because you should be passionate. You’ll sometimes be too moody or too lazy and sometimes you’ll look like an absolute idiot but at least you’re being something real.

Loving yourself doesn’t mean that the voices go away or that you never have bad days or that you think everything about yourself is perfect (girl, you still got shit to work on) - it means that despite those things, you can continue to be happy and live boldly, without limits and brick walls. When you stop letting your behavior be driven from guilt and drive it from a place of compassion and love, the results are so much better.

Love yourself. Love yourself everyday. It makes life so much brighter. It makes you limitless.

“Oh my God, what if you wake up some day, and you’re 65, or 75, and you never got your memoir or novel written; or your didn’t go swimming in warm pools and oceans all those years because your thighs were jiggly and you have a nice big comfortable tummy; or you were just so strung out on perfectionism and people-pleasing that you forgot to have a big juicy creative life, of imagination and radical silliness and staring off into space like when you were a kid? Its going to break your heart. Don’t let this happen.” Unknown

Friendship is work.

In your teens, while friendship feels super dramatic and volatile at times, in actuality it’s pretty easy to make friends in high school. It’s even easier to lose them. In high school, you are with most of your friends all day long, 5-6 days a week. In college, you take similar classes, attend the same parties, or join the same sorority. But as you sneak into your mid-twenties and begin making decisions from a more fully-formed you, friendship becomes harder. And that’s not anyone’s fault.

Friendship is work. Hard work. Schedules, spouses, kids, careers, obligations all begin to naturally pull you apart. Again, it’s not anyone’s fault - there’s no one to blame. Remember this, because the blame game is something you will try to lean on to make yourself feel better.

As you struggle to juggle your individual needs and schedule you will have to start deciding who you can put this work in for. Some people that are GOOD people won’t make the list. It doesn’t mean you hate them or won’t grab drinks with them once in a blue moon - it simply means you acknowledge and release the work needed for true friendship. On the flip side, you will have to accept that your friends are having to do the same.

Yes, your close friend group will get smaller, but it will be so much deeper and more meaningful. These friends - the ones you decide you’re going to do the work for, the ones that will do the work for you - are the ones that will shape who you are. After all, you are the company that you keep. These are the people who will hold up a mirror to show you you flaws and push you to grow and be better. They will inspire you and act as your cheerleader. They will call you out when you’re being an asshole. When they say “let’s get dinner soon” they really mean it. These are the people that will make you laugh until you cry - usually over something that’s not even funny to anyone else. The will celebrate ALL of you, the good and the bad.

It’s not about how long you’ve known them - although that can play a part - it’s about how they make you feel. These people are your tribe, and they’re worth the work.

“Friendship: If love is sudden, friendship is steady. At the moment of meeting a friend for the first time, we might be aware of an immediate “click” or a sudden mutual interest. But we don’t ‘fall into friendship.’ … for friendship is based on knowledge, and love can be based on mere hope. You can love someone more than you know him ... but the more you know a friend, the more a friend he is... It is built on the accumulation of past experiences, and not the fickle and vulnerable promise of future ones. It has a sturdiness that love may often lack, and an undemonstrative beauty that love would walk heedlessly past ... How unlike love, with its pressing, urgent desire for union, for self oblivion in another’s arms. If in a lover we seek an end to our individuation, in a friend we seek its full development ... So he comes to a friend in exactly the opposite way that a lover comes to his beloved. He comes not out of need, or passion, or longing. He comes out of a radical choice ... Because of this independence, a friend can be far more honest than a lover. When a lover is asked for the truth, she has to consider how such a revelation might adversely affect her relationship; and since she needs her lover and her lover needs her, she is under intense pressure to shade her meaning, veil her words, or even, simply, lie … But a friend is less constrained. She is almost required to tell the truth, because her role is not primarily to support a friend’s needs but to accompany a friend’s life.” Andrew Sullivan, from his book Love Undetectable

You’ve got a lot of scars.

One, in particular, on your knee. It’s still a blur exactly how it happened. All you can remember is that you glanced down and blood was pouring down your leg. Yikes. There had been no pain. Zero. No warning. And now, you will carry that scar forever. You kind of like it, for reasons you can’t explain. It makes you different. Kinda cool. **insert emoji of cat wearing sunglasses** You don’t feel that way about all your scars, of course. I’ve already mentioned the stretch marks. Those, while never physically painful, have had their fun being quite emotionally painful. Pride, what a bitch.

Pride is going to be a constant battle for you. I’m not just referring to it relation to your physical appearance. You actually deal with it worse in relation to your emotions/actions. If I’m being honest I’m not sure you’ll ever be able to overcome this vice, but you will learn to acknowledge it. You’ll begin to understand how hard it makes it for you to forgive people.

You’ve been hurt, deeply, over time growing up, by a few key people. To you now, at twenty, this pain is still very relevant - very present. And even when you try to heal, unfortunately, you can’t yet stop yourself from picking at the wounds, opening them back up despite yourself. And you’ll be hurt again, more swiftly and from a drastically different angle, but just as deeply, in your twenties. I wish I didn’t have to tell you these things, but I do, because it’s part of who you are.

I can promise you is that this pain will fade with time. Unfortunately, the scars will not, and they’ll weave themselves like poison through your heart and mind - suffocating your ability and desire to trust.

You’ll deal with this with sarcasm and an impressive lack of emotions. Emotions make you vulnerable. Emotions, trust, truth - those things give other people power. And when you’ve given these things away in the past, they’ve been horribly abused - sometimes with ill intent, sometimes you just ended up in the crossfire. So, like a vampire in a teen TV drama, you’ve turned your emotions off so you can be strong for yourself and so you can be strong for others. You tell yourself it’s better this way.

You are only just now understanding how toxic allowing yourself to so severely push people away has been for your heart - how defensive and guarded you are now. Sorry to tell you, at 30, you’ve got a lot of work to do. But at least you can see it, acknowledge it, give it a fist bump.

Looking at these scars, however, even with the understanding time provides, makes it very hard to forgive. Because they will remind you of weakness and sadness, and they fuck with your pride.

However, sometimes despite the severe pain and confusion, forgiveness will come blindingly, almost painfully, fast. Your mind will be so overloaded that your heart will simply give you no choice. In other circumstances, your mind will push SO hard against the concept of forgiveness, even if your heart is already there.

What am I trying to tell you here? I suppose the moral of the story is if you continue to make someone the villain, you continue to make yourself the victim.

Yeah, you’ve got a lot of scars. So does everybody. Big fucking deal, Alex. You can use them to seal you up or you can use them to open you up. You can be so guarded trying to prevent yourself from getting anymore scars, or you can live, accepting that you will get more, and that’s okay because with each one you’ll learn. You’ll learn and you’ll experience and it won’t all be bad.

Like I said, everybody has scars. But it’s up to you to decide what they remind you of and how you let them guide you.

“I carry a lot of scars. I like the way that sounds. I carry a lot of scars.” Alex Garland, from his novel The Beach

give time to time.

I don’t want to spoil all the details, but you’ll eventually find yourself on a live-aboard dive boat off the coast of Thailand. It will be a magical trip, full of sunshine, salt-water, and colored by a unique group of comically different people connected only by the need to be one with the sea.

After two gorgeous, magical morning dives, you’ll sit next to the instructor of your small, assigned diving group. “What does your tattoo mean?” You’ll ask. He’ll explain that it’s something his Grandfather used to say, and it reminds him that we’re not in control of everything - especially, maybe most frustratingly, time. We can’t speed it up and we can’t slow it down. We can’t argue or barter with it.

This isn’t anything revolutionary - obviously you know we can’t control time. If I could, I’d just time travel and have this conversation with you in person over a bottle of wine. But despite knowing that, you will spend an awful lot of time trying to do just that - and being disappointed and frustrated when you can’t. Even now, you’re anxious, ready, counting the seconds until you’re thirty. You want it to SPEED UP. And then just as quickly, you’ll want it to SLOW DOWN. You can’t control it though, and that’s so annoying. Because girl, you like to be in control if you hadn’t already figured that out.

Relax on this one. I’ve talked a lot about hard stuff in this letter, I get that. I haven’t really made your twenties look all that attractive. That’s so far from the truth. Your twenties are magical. You’re old enough to make your own decisions, but young enough to make a lot of fun wrong ones. Your twenties are full of belly laughs and true friends and adventure and endless horizons. Your twenties are when you’ll drink too much gin and dance to Spice Girls like the world is ending (which it will feel like it is the next day). You’ll graduate college and get out into the “real world” where you’ll start to realize how much you love work. You’ll live on your own for the first time. You’ll start to understand your worth. You’ll meet people that make you feel like you’re worth more than you could have ever imaged. You’ll accumulate magnets and passport stamps and embarrassing drunk text messages. And one day you’ll blink and you’ll be me - on the verge of a new decade.

“I wish there was a way to know you were in the good old days before you actually left them." Andy Bernard, The Office

You don’t have to wish, I’m telling you. Enjoy the mess of your twenties, I doubt there’s anything quite like it.

“But what does it mean?” You’ll ask again.

He’ll tap his back, right on top of the large black script written in Spanish so it’s outside of your mind’s grasp.

“Give time to time.” He’ll say.

You can start over.

Finally, if you’ve made it to the end of this without totally panicking - one last thing. I have no idea if your twenties are the best years of your life (I’m hoping not). But live them like they are.

One of the biggest lies you tell yourself in your early twenties is that it’s too late to change paths. You cheat yourself into thinking that some choices you’ve made are too big to be reversed or deterred. This is just so NOT true.

“Quit your job and move to Nepal to write. Just do it.” You’ll be told this one night at a bar, while you’re double-fisting two beers. It’s the kind of drunken talk that everyone likes to partake in - where we’re pretending to be ridiculous but are actually spilling our deepest, darkest desires.

You’ll laugh, brush it off, take another sip of your beer. But you’ll think about it for a long time after.

Why? Because it hit too close to your deepest wish: to travel, just you and a backpack, around the world. No agenda. No specific location. No one around expecting you to be any certain kind of way: a good daughter, a fierce business woman, a funny friend, a etc., etc. It’s a dream so deep that it feels truly unattainable, almost ridiculous. At twenty-five, you’ll feel too rooted to places, people, things, obligations, expectations. It’s overwhelming.

But guess what? You fucking do it.

I’m not going to spoil all the details for you, but, know this: it’s the best decision you’ll ever make - up until now, anyway. There’s a lot of reasons for that too, but the main one is that you learn something that is so BIG and FREEING: You can start over. At any moment. And you can do it again and again and again.

It’s not without consequence and the process can be brutal, but you can.

“For what it’s worth ... it’s never too late, or in my case too early, to be whoever you want to be. There’s no time limit. Start whenever you want. You can change or stay the same. There are no rules to this thing. We can make the best or the worst of it. I hope you make the best of it. I hope you see things that startle you. I hope you feel things you’ve never felt before. I hope you meet people who have a different point of view. I hope you live a life you’re proud of, and if you’re not, I hope you have the courage to start over again.” F. Scott Fitzgerald

Be brave. Be kind. Have courage. Be open. Have a lot of fucking fun.

Almost Thirty-Year Old Alex signing out,

Cheers, bitch.