I have been here for five years now.
The past few years, I reflected on my life in comparison to the ideas I held as a recent college graduate who moved here with ambition, determination, and naivety. I indulged in the what-ifs. Gleaned wisdom from heartaches and accepted the tribulations. And it wasn’t until now, five years later, that I fully acknowledged how much older I have become.
I don’t mean to whine about my age—I know that I am still young—and obviously, half a decade will age anyone. But it took until this year for me to internalize it. I see it in the curves and shadows of my stubbled face. I feel it in the new limitations of my body. I hear it in my newborn niece’s babbles over the phone. Photos of me from my first year in Seattle paint a distinctly more youthful self. When did that happen? Where did all that time go?
Time blurs even more in this pandemic. Maybe it’s the accretion of months of election anxiety mixed with life in quarantine. The days turn into weeks, and I feel like I’m battling time—angry at time—trying to savor it. The forgiveness of my early twenties is dissipating, and I’m reckoning with the pace of change, learning to adapt. My youthful stubbornness won’t carry me to greatness forever.
Five years later and, yes, I still am a twentysomething, even if just for a little longer: young and becoming. For better or for worse, time ticks faster than I wish to admit. But as I look back at those photos from my first year in Seattle, I see just how much I have grown into myself. If time is a luxury, then cheers to the wealth of aging.