Hello!
It's been a while since I've written anything. Nothing has made me ache in any peculiar way recently to allow me to express it. October has been a creative stump.
But! There is yet hope.
I had a conversation with a few friends of mine that scratched at some parts of my brain that I've left unearthed for a while. We're all young adults talking about the horrors of being young adults at a time where we are constantly told these are the peak years of youth. It doesn't get better than this. What a nightmare.
We all agreed that despite these constant affirmations that this age is where we'll make all those "I'm-gonna-look-back-on-this-one-day" memories, we feel pretty stagnant in our youth. I've already got grey hairs and most of us complain about bad hips and knees. I've been looking back on the Scholastic book fair and my poetry I wrote at 16 fondly. This is the best it gets?
If anything, it seemed like all of us were longing for a stage in 'real' adulthood that feels stable. We laid out dreams of owning a home with a wrap-around porch, teaching college courses for the simple sake of enjoying education on the other side of the glass, green pastures, post-retirement reunions, contentment of a full life lived. Stuff that started as a joke and devolved into actual, aching desire for a place we couldn't exactly define. Maybe we'd be content at 50 if what we were doing now was sustainable enough to get us there.
But then came the simple pleasures. Making a six-egg breakfast for the person you love, who will always have the opposite seat at the table from you. Mowing your own lawn. Telling a young person that it gets better. Stuff that doesn't exactly come with age-- just with time. We shrank into those worlds like they could fit in the palm of our hands.
It was sad.
Just, really sad for a moment. For me at least.
My youth wasn't an exciting thing anymore. It was instability, confusion, a maze of faces and choices that had no coherent pattern. Success was too dynamic of a definition to ever feel satisfied by any final result. What a horrible, intangible fear. It's maddening to mourn your own youth at 19.
One of my friends made a passing remark on how he turns 20 soon, how old he's getting. Like at the cusp of our youth, we have already somehow fallen behind.
Which leads me to my title. The "Good" Part. What the hell does that even mean?
For me it's two sides- sometimes it's the parts of being a kid that I can remember in some detail. Cicadas outside my window, colorful clothes, woodchip covered playgrounds, devouring the Magic Tree House and Goosebumps series like my life depended on it. Turkey sandwiches and Sunny D and trick or treating and hand turkeys and Silly Bands. Wanting to be an astronaut and the first woman president, at the same time.
But I mean, that wasn't all of it. Cicadas hollowed themselves out and would pile up dead on the back porch. Woodchips never really prevented skinned knees. I learned that my pet goldfish wouldn't survive in space with me, and I was devastated. So maybe that wasn't the good part. To be fair, at that age I didn't think much of what could be better or worse. Things just were.
Lately the other half of the good part has sounded like what I think 'real' adulthood looks like. The part where I get to look back on this and let out a really satisfying sigh that I've held for 50something years. When I was 14, I thought this would be the good part: romanticized college years full of late nights and driving myself around and what I thought made up teenage freedoms. Most nights I stay in, sometimes on a call with my out of state friends in between writing another reading summary for my Journalism History class. Who would've known that these nights are always more appealing than what I had thought for myself five years ago.
That being said, I think my friends and I have a horrible concept of what the good part is. Maybe that's something we'll grow out of, too.
I'm starting to think the good part is all the parts of now that we're not going to look back on in any particular way. We take easy mornings for granted far too often. There is some glory in surviving the 45-minute commute. I went to a 4 p.m. movie showing on a Tuesday and had the time of my life. I'm sure 14-year-old me had far greater aspirations of what the brink of my 20s would look like but it is a thrill in itself to be able to stand on that brink.
Maybe the idealist in all of us is far too occupied in being an architect of the "good" part that the realist in us never gets a chance to take pleasure in the ongoing construction of it all. If it's fiction, I don't think any of us are going to find contentment within our memories or any hope for our futures.
The "good" has become such a distant desire that we've completely disregarded the need to savor the dynamic parts of our identity now. Maybe being ever-changing is something to celebrate. I've been so scared of forgetting the astronaut-president in me and losing sight of the retired-publisher in me that I don't know the girl who sits between them.
In all fairness, I may just be a particularly boring young adult. This entire entry is subjective to a three-hour conversation in a college newsroom and the fact I've been listening to "Vienna" by Billy Joel a lot recently. And for the record, I'll almost never take my own advice on this. But for tonight I'm listening intently. There are cicadas outside my window and friends in my phone.
And for my friends, my wonderfully zealous and nostalgic friends, I always want the best for them. I hope we look back in 30 years and it's never what we thought it would be. I hope we're foolish at 19. I hope all their parts are good.
It was good, it is good and it will be good. Maybe that's it. Or maybe not. Either way, the only real way is through.
Thanks for entertaining this. Some of those wonderfully zealous and nostalgic friends were kind enough to share what their "good" part looks like.
L.N. - "all of the times I was laughing so hard I started crying"
S.N. - "I dream of my childhood dog and how I would tuck her into bed with me when I was small"
C.M. - "Now. I'm in my early 20's dating, starting my career, traveling and enjoying myself"
R.C. - "Past. Like when I was in kindergarten or when I was 16 but no in between"
Anon. - "My hopes and dreams that are yet to come true"
J.D. - "Stability and freedom to enjoy myself"
G.S. - "Future"
B.N. - "Right now. I have good friends and the bestest boy ever. This is the good life."
C.A. - "Past (nostalgia) and future (anticipation of good to come) but rarely the present"
V.S. - "I think of the early 2010s. I think the music and most of my memories was with my sister"
C.B. - "I think of my friends anytime I think of the good part of life, but specifically I think about the future. I think of all the things I want to do with them and for them"
A.S. - "I dream about living in a big city and I walk out of my door and the cold air hits my face and in that moment, I'll know I'm in the good part of life"
Anon. - "I dream of soaking up all the precious moments that may come with spending time with a future husband and daughter, living a simple, but colorful life with a garden and small farm. ... I dream of a quiet last few decades on this earth, enjoying growing old with a future husband on daily evening walks. So all in the future."
K.W. - "Peace. I mean being able to just sit down and relax and not have to worry anymore. Just being able to let my guard down finally and let go ... Future for sure"
M.E. - "When I used to play football, had perfect grades, never worried about what I had to eat. Fucking mint. I'd say elementary school"
Wishing you all the best, always.
Signed,
Mariam
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