reflections on 26

I turned 27 a couple weeks ago 🎂

I was grateful for random 60° winter sunshine, for friends that showed up to a last-minute picnic, for all the birthday sweets and virtual love sent from around the world.

I wrote in my journal on my last birthday: “If you think back to where you were this time last year, you’d have never thought to be here.” The same is true for this year, and I hope it continues to be true every year. I want a life that is surprising, weird, wonderful.

26 lived up to that. Shit, this year has been crazy. I traveled through Chile and Bolivia, then accidentally moved home when New York shut down. I biked with my dad and did ballet with my mom and took farmer’s market trips with my brother - and shouted over dinner about politics and race. I cried over the Chinese grandma set on fire and the man who yelled at my father in a parking lot: “Fuck you, go back to China.” I ripped shots over Zoom and dated over FaceTime. I took 30 weeks of writing class and formed unexpected friendships with strangers who bared their secrets. I moved back to NY and caught COVID from a deeply selfish mistake. I got into schools that will whisk my life abroad, like I’ve always dreamed of. I opened my heart to someone I knew, only now in a new way. I wrote and danced and drew; I cried and fought and floundered.

The world has hurt so much this year, and so have I. So have you. But maybe, like me, you found that good news this year felt even greater. Falling carbon emissions. Rising racial justice. A new president. A woman of color as our VP. A vaccine.

Without hurt, maybe hope wouldn’t be so powerful.