nobody likes you when youre twenty three!
Jun. 15th, 2025 07:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
indigoliviaI turned 23 in my hometown. I thought, for the whole night, about a post I saw that said we age, not in a linear fashion but rather in a spiral. Like this:
Time leaves, I remember it, and it comes back to me years later. I feel like this is represented by the fact that I am living in my hometown for the first time since 18, and probably the last. I have fallen in love with this place with the same passion that I used to despise it in my youth. I have rekindled friendships, I have laid on my back for the older brothers of acquaintances I knew as a teenager, I have danced in the places that I cried, I have cried in the places where I graduated, kissed, ate with friends. I am twenty-three in my hometown, and it makes perfect sense for me to turn an odd-numbered-age in such an odd place. I feel like each year I gain, it is used to heal a corrupted mindset I held years prior. Or maybe I am being naive. I am older, I say I am wiser, but I am reckless with my heart in the same familiar way. I don't lend it to predatory men anymore, but it is on the sleeve of my shirt on the floor of someone I wont speak to in two weeks. I am not shapeshifting, like how I did for so much of my youth in this place, but I am screaming "look at me! look at me!" on every social media post, wondering if my childhood classmates are impressed. Wondering if they are perturbed. I feel more myself, but I think I am intimidated by how much I feel the same as I did 8 years ago, sitting on the same bathroom sink. Spinning in the mirror for hours, analyzing my body under watchful and judgy eyes. Piping down for the man, speaking up when I can. I know I am different, but if I am more the same then does that mean I am just as sick as I was? Can I hold so much of my fifteen year old self inside of me without rotting like I did when she WAS me? Who Am I? Why Am I?
I have the fish bag feeling. My brothers pet beta fish in a plastic tub, situated in a cupholder on the drive home while we blare Korn or some other divorced dad rock song. The anxiety of it, easily forgotten in a big and beautiful tank. He has a bubble nest now. A name. I wish I could have told him, when the bass from our music was creating rings above his head: Youre an angel! With fins like wings! We are taking you to heaven!
But he would have swam just the same, anxiously. I feel like BoneJangles. I feel like there is an omnipotent being, cupping my imaginary too-small petsmart cup, shouting at me that these feelings are a necessary evil on the route to my bigger aquarium. My "plenty of fish" maybe. My bubble nest? Who's to say. I am twenty three in my hometown, and I have never felt more like a teenager.
Time leaves, I remember it, and it comes back to me years later. I feel like this is represented by the fact that I am living in my hometown for the first time since 18, and probably the last. I have fallen in love with this place with the same passion that I used to despise it in my youth. I have rekindled friendships, I have laid on my back for the older brothers of acquaintances I knew as a teenager, I have danced in the places that I cried, I have cried in the places where I graduated, kissed, ate with friends. I am twenty-three in my hometown, and it makes perfect sense for me to turn an odd-numbered-age in such an odd place. I feel like each year I gain, it is used to heal a corrupted mindset I held years prior. Or maybe I am being naive. I am older, I say I am wiser, but I am reckless with my heart in the same familiar way. I don't lend it to predatory men anymore, but it is on the sleeve of my shirt on the floor of someone I wont speak to in two weeks. I am not shapeshifting, like how I did for so much of my youth in this place, but I am screaming "look at me! look at me!" on every social media post, wondering if my childhood classmates are impressed. Wondering if they are perturbed. I feel more myself, but I think I am intimidated by how much I feel the same as I did 8 years ago, sitting on the same bathroom sink. Spinning in the mirror for hours, analyzing my body under watchful and judgy eyes. Piping down for the man, speaking up when I can. I know I am different, but if I am more the same then does that mean I am just as sick as I was? Can I hold so much of my fifteen year old self inside of me without rotting like I did when she WAS me? Who Am I? Why Am I?
I have the fish bag feeling. My brothers pet beta fish in a plastic tub, situated in a cupholder on the drive home while we blare Korn or some other divorced dad rock song. The anxiety of it, easily forgotten in a big and beautiful tank. He has a bubble nest now. A name. I wish I could have told him, when the bass from our music was creating rings above his head: Youre an angel! With fins like wings! We are taking you to heaven!
But he would have swam just the same, anxiously. I feel like BoneJangles. I feel like there is an omnipotent being, cupping my imaginary too-small petsmart cup, shouting at me that these feelings are a necessary evil on the route to my bigger aquarium. My "plenty of fish" maybe. My bubble nest? Who's to say. I am twenty three in my hometown, and I have never felt more like a teenager.
