30 before 30 :: the letter

Dear 20-Year-Old Kelsey:

Let’s just get this part out of the way: here’s what’s not going to happen in the next ten years.

You’re not going to get married. You’ll believe, deep in your bones, that you’ll marry your college boyfriend. You won’t. That breakup will be painful but will be the first time in this decade that you truly listen to what you want and do something about it. You’ll believe, even deeper in your bones, that you’ll marry a man who made you believe in love at first sight. You won’t. You’ll be buried by the heartache for a while, but will eventually see — and believe in — a world beyond it. 

You’ll be glad you did not rush to fit into a timeline you thought you should follow. You’ll be grateful you did not sacrifice parts of who you are for someone else. These will be the first moments of listening and trusting your gut. There will be more.

You’re not going to have a relationship with your dad. On every birthday, you’ll hold out hope that you’ll hear from him. You won’t. You’ll talk twice in these ten years: before your college graduation, where he’ll promise to take you out for a drink since he won’t attend, and at your grandfather’s funeral, where he’ll finally buy you that drink. His absence will shape you — you’ll talk about it to your mom, your inner circle, your therapist. But it will not define you.

You’ll get to a place where you feel the grief less, where you can release the anger, where you can move toward acceptance of what is. You won’t let go, but you’ll hold it lightly. Be patient; it’s coming.

You’re not going to have it all figured out. You really won’t have anything figured out at any point, really, even when you’re certain you do. You believe that there is a linear path right now — this guides you in almost everything you do. If you do this, then this, then this, then you’ll be there. But then you’ll change your major a few more times, you’ll have your world flipped by travel abroad, you’ll change careers. Uncertainty will always scare you, but it will be less and less as you move through each year. You’ll learn that there’s not really a “figured out” destination that you (or anyone else) arrives at.

None of that will happen for you this decade. But here’s what will.

You will see beautiful places. Rwanda and India and England, the skyline of Chicago and the mountains in Colorado and the beautiful coast in Cannon Beach. You’ll reckon with the privilege you have to get an education abroad and travel for fun and have paid time off. You’ll reflect on what it means to feel at home, what it means to call a place home. You will find your people in all of these places, and find new parts of yourself, too. 

You will date. Or, at least, you’ll go on dates. A man you’ve met once will surprise you at the airport with a cup of coffee and flowers. You’ll donate to a canvasser who stops by your door, and let him take you out for drinks. You’ll meet a man on a dance floor at your favorite bar and stay in touch for seven years. You’ll learn about yourself and more about what you want from every date, every kiss, every human.

You will have life-changing friendships. Life-saving ones. Your dearest friends at 20 will still be yours at 29, and what a miracle that will be — to have a decade of history together. You’ll build new connections along the way, write letters and FaceTime and spend hours over coffee and Thai and wine. They’ll listen to you jabber on about the same old things you’re unwilling to change and love you anyway. They’ll be the safe places you can cry and practice vulnerability. They’ll nudge you, each time, toward the truest version of yourself.

You will grapple with depression and disordered eating, and you won’t tell anyone, though you wonder if you should. You’ll discover the ways you self-sabotage when people try to care for you, and understand how your quirks and deeper-rooted issues show up in your days. You will agonize over what you should do in the world, over who you should be. You will wonder if you should look a different way, if you should have chosen a different path, if you should, should, should. The shoulds will consume you for a long time.

But you’ll get to a place where you can say — and mostly believe — that the ‘shoulds’ you have in your mind are not helpful to you. Or to anyone else. You’ll try, every day, to keep them quiet. It will, every day, be a work in progress.

You’ll sing in so many karaoke bars, you’ll start and stop and start therapy, you’ll think you want to become a pastor. You’ll get emergency surgery in another country, you’ll read poems that make you cry, you’ll get a master’s degree. You’ll call your mom, you’ll kill some plants, you’ll start this blog.

You’ll guard your heart when you should open it, and give your heart to people who don’t deserve it. You’ll sit with people in their deepest pain, and find moments to celebrate with them, too. You’ll change your mind about so many things — tattoos, sex, meat, religion. Socks, capital letters, coffee, technology. You’ll make mistakes. You’ll do many things right.

So much won’t happen this decade that you thought would. And — even better — so much will happen that you can’t even imagine, things you don’t even know to wish for that will come true. You’ll learn that you can try to plan and control all you want, but that there’s really no use. You’ll repeat this to yourself and, slowly, slowly, learn to hold things lightly, to loosen your grip — if only just a bit. 

And, at 29, you’re going to sit down to write a letter to yourself. You’ll pick up your old journals from that year, giggle at your absolute conviction in one entry and your utter confusion in the one the next day. That is your life — both/and, all the time. You’ll look back at this decade and think, “Yes. This was it. This was mine.”

This decade is yours, dear one. Eyes open, heart wide, bold and gentle. Pay attention to it all.

I promise you, you won’t want to miss a thing. 

All the love,
Kelsey

trunk dwelling.

I have taken to sitting on top of my car. I go there after I go for a walk, or when I’m talking on the phone, and sometimes just because I want to. I have a patio attached to my apartment, with two chairs, that would work for this purpose. There’s plenty of sittable grass around my building, too. But if the weather is kind, I’ll plop myself on the trunk of my car, just like this. I hop up and lean back at a 45-degree angle and look.

Up, at the trees, the clouds, the sky. I look ahead, and watch cute pups and their owners, or I follow the turkeys who — I swear to God — look at least one way before crossing the street. Or sometimes, I don’t look at all. I close my eyes and listen: to the trees swishing their leaves, or the whoosh of the cars as they drive past, or to the just-as-important but quieter wonderings of my heart. 

And I think. About everything important and nothing important. It’s kind of the opposite of meditating, where you’re supposed to let all thoughts out of your head and only focus on your breath. Instead, I focus on everything except my breath, welcoming every weird question and thought, seeing where it takes me. What kind of job will I have next? I wonder what Glennon Doyle is doing right now? Do I really believe that I can do hard things, like she says we can? Where are these seven police cars driving to so quickly on a Sunday morning? Where do turkeys sleep? How do turkeys sleep?

This new trunk-sitting habit of mine doesn’t make much sense. As previously mentioned, there are plenty of other, more sensible places for me to sit with my thoughts. I know that others think this new habit is weird, too, because sometimes, when my eyes are open, cars slow down and drivers look at me sitting on my trunk. Every once in a while, a pedestrian passes through the parking lot, notices me, and squints at me sitting on my trunk, too. 

But since the world doesn’t make much sense to me these days — both the big things (What did our president just say?, How many humans in the world haven’t had a hug since all this started?, etc.) and the smaller but still-important wonderings of my own life (What will I have for dinner?, What is it I plan to do next with my one wild and precious life?, etc.) — I thought, why does this have to make sense? And what does it even mean for something to make sense anyway? 

Maybe, instead, sitting on my trunk is what makes the most sense. The first time I sat here, I was on the phone. I didn’t want to keep walking, and I didn’t want to go inside yet, and I didn’t want to sit on the ground, so I perched on my car. And when the phone call was over, I just…stayed there. And it felt good, easy, natural. I plopped myself on top of my trunk again a few days later. And then again, and again.

The trunk of my car has become a bit of a buffer; it provides some quiet time before going back into my apartment, where my laundry needs folding or my plants need watering or my resume (which has been a Google Doc tab open for weeks) is taunting me to finally pay attention to it. The trunk of my car is my own scratched-up, metal-island oasis that I can plop myself on, where I can just…be. In times like these, what makes sense is to do what feels good, whenever and wherever we can.

And I’ll keep coming back to it, until my trunk dwelling stops feeling this way.

Maybe your created oasis is not on top of the trunk of your car, but inside a dark closet, or on a blanket thrown on the grass, or both depending on the day. Maybe it’s found on a 5-minute walk around the neighborhood or a 25-minute drive on the highway, where the destination is nowhere except deeper into your own heart/thoughts/life. Maybe it’s all of the above, or somewhere different, either a physical place or a moment — even just one — you can steal for yourself. However you can, I hope you find space to seek out what you need in these times — moments of comfort, rest, joy, relief, hilarity, stillness, clarity — even if they don’t make much sense to others. If it makes sense and feels good for you? Well, then, that’s all the reasoning you need.

And maybe, just maybe, if we stay here long enough, the trunk-sitting and the highway-driving and the closet-dwelling and the slowing down will help the rest of the world make a bit more sense, too.