If I were 23, I’d tell myself that all those journals I was writing would just gather dust, and that I ought to get on with the business of writing fiction. I’d tell myself to study some really good stories, like the works of Flannery O’Connor, instead of wallowing in Anais Nin, who always made me feel as though I was not having quite enough sex (although, looking back, I was).
I’d tell myself that, 24 years later, I wouldn’t have read a single word of any of those journals, which I so painstakingly kept for years, scribbling away with colored pens while Enya’s voice spilled out of my boom box. I’d tell myself that a record of one’s days is relentlessly and uselessly Jungian, while a pile of unpublished stories is an education, an apprenticeship, a step in the right direction. I’d tell myself that the sentences I thought were so pretty, with all the linguistic flourishes, were actually just really long. I’d tell myself that there would come a time when I would prefer Steve Forbert to Enya, Inn n’ Out to Wendy’s, Ismail Kadare to Anais Nin. I’d tell myself that the only passions of my youth that I would still be passionate about in middle age would be solitude, books, and writing.
I’d tell myself that the apartment that came with my internship with Whittle Communications in Knoxville, Tennessee, would be the last free apartment I’d ever have, so I ought to enjoy the two bedrooms, large kitchen, and brand new furniture, none of which I had to share. I’d tell myself that when I did start sharing an apartment, with a fellow former intern at a subsidized housing complex across the street from a police station, I should keep it cleaner. I should make greater effort to go out with my roommate, a nice girl from Ohio, who was really a lot of fun.
But then, I would also tell myself that I would never grow out of my desire for solitude. My intense need to be quiet and alone, punctuated by brief bouts of longing for conversations with strangers, would never waver. I’d say, “When you were six years old, you preferred to be alone. Now, at 23, you prefer to be alone. When you are twice as old as you are now, you will still prefer to be alone. It is your nature; embrace it. Don’t feel the need to go out just because young people ‘go out.’ If you want to stay home and write, stay home and write. There is nothing wrong with that.”
I might say, “Less makeup. More sunscreen.” And “Cable-access news is on its way out, faster than you can say pleated jeans.”
I’d tell myself not to worry, that I would not always be poor and uninsured, that I would not always have to pay for necessary surgical procedures on my credit card or agonize over the purchase of a pair of shoes from Payless. I’d tell myself that Payless wouldn’t even calculate in my future, that the cheap shoes, like the credit card surgery and the tanning salon job that paid $5 an hour and the cable-access news job that paid nothing and the waitressing job that put me in harm’s way for a pittance were minor bumps on the way to a more comfortable existence.
I’d tell myself that, when the old gynecologist patted me on the knee suggestively and whispered that I had a pretty cervix, I had every right to slap him. There were a lot of people I should have slapped in those days, but, having been raised in a Southern Baptist church where teenaged girls were referred to as “righteous foxes,” I was conditioned to graciously accept shady compliments from men in positions of authority.
I’d tell myself to end the engagement to the sociopath sooner, and to be kinder to the next fellow, who was and is a very good man. I’d tell myself that the sociopath and the very good man would both soon be a matter of history, anyway, because in a couple of years I would walk into a stuffy classroom in Fayetteville, Arkansas, on the first day of my MFA program, and meet my life head on. I’d tell myself that this would be a good time to quote Grace Paley: “Hello, My Life.”
I’d tell myself to keep the shoes and the dress I wore on that profoundly significant day, and to throw away a lot of other stuff, which I’d carry from me from apartment to apartment, house to house, for many years, even decades, and which, spongelike, would expand to fit whatever space I lived in.
I’d tell myself that a decade seems long until it’s behind you. That the shortest decade I’d ever experience would be the one between my son’s birth and his tenth birthday. That on a spring day in 2015, the boy who once felt as light in my arms as a loaf of bread would look up at me and say, “I bet I can pick you up.” And then he would pick me up. And I would realize that the next decade would move even faster than the last, and I better hang on and practice “being in the moment,” a skill for which there were many helpful apps.
“What are apps?” my 23 year old self would surely ask. To which I would reply, “I really can’t explain it.”
“What are apps?” my 23 year old self would surely ask. To which I would reply, “I really can’t explain it.”
I’d tell myself that the next twenty-three years would be okay. That all the places I couldn’t imagine going, I’d eventually get to. I’d tell myself that I would work in Beijing, and I would work in the Empire State Building, and I’d see the Northern Lights in Iceland, and I’d ride a bus through Patagonia to Ushuaia, the town “at the end of the world,” that I’d honeymoon in Budapest and take my kid swimming in Oslo’s public baths during a startlingly warm Norwegian summer, that I’d live with my family in Paris, that I’d watch my son board a metro to school as he learned to traverse an unamiliar city in an unfamiliar language alone, that I’d get lost on a mountain in a thunderstorm in Slovenia and be rescued by a troop of young boys who, many years later, would find me on a thing called Facebook, which was on a thing called the Internet, which predated those things called apps.
I’d tell myself not to lose the photograph my boyfriend took of me and my parents on the ferry to the Statue of Liberty, in 1999, the last photo of the three of us together. In a few months my parents would be divorced, my boyfriend would be my fiancé, and we’d be on our way to San Francisco, which was where I’d always hoped to live in the first place. In the photo, my parents, who have not yet told me about their plans to end their thirty-year marriage, stand on either side of me, and in the background, the Twin Towers rise up, so ugly and imposing, and yet, it seemed, so reassuringly permanent.
If I were 23, I’d say, “Don’t worry, you’ll keep writing.” Because the need to write would never go away, and through every bump in the road that desire would keep me going. It would always be what I came back to, my parachute against tragedy, my planned soft landing. Well, if A, B, or C happens, at least I can write about it. Though, deep down, I understood that, in the face of real tragedy, it was quite possible that I would cease to write. Because words can only take you so far. Because there is such a thing as the unspeakable.
More optimistically, I’d remind myself that I was young: at 23, I couldn’t wrap my mind around that now-obvious fact. At 23, I believed my time was very short, that I must do and experience everything as soon as possible.
If I were 23, I’d tell myself that, one day, life would indeed be short, but for now, the road ahead was long and meandering, occasionally scary and sometimes dangerous, but over so much better than I imagined it could be. I’d tell myself to stop worrying so much, and just get on with the ride.