A friend asked me recently, “How does it feel to be 35?”
I paused for a moment to consider the question seriously, and then said,
Honestly, I feel younger! In many ways, I feel like I’m 25 again.
My life has taken a bizarrely circular path in the last year. Losing both Stephen and Kelvin has now left me in a mysteriously similar situation to where I was in my early 20s: me and my cat Ferb, living in an apartment, with hopes, dreams, and a sense of excited uncertainty that I have no idea what my future will look like.
Some people wish that they could go back in time to their youth and do things differently. (Here’s looking at you, Uncle Rico from Napoleon Dynamite.) And I realized recently that in a lot of ways, I now have that opportunity! Granted, I have a bit more cellulite than I did at 25, but I also have a lot more life experience and wisdom. (For example, I’m a lot better about applying sunscreen now! I learned my lesson in Jamaica.) I’m genuinely excited to relive my 20s, so to speak, but with some significant improvements upon what I had a decade ago.
Here’s a few different ways that I’ve grown:
- Financial Security: One really fun thing about my current situation is that I have a youthful sense that the world is my oyster, but I have much more in terms of monetary resources than I did at 25. Vacations that would have been pure fantasy 10 years ago are now actually achievable!
- Sense of Identity: At 25, I’m not sure that I really knew who I was. (Granted, I don’t know that many 25 year-olds do!) I now have a much clearer sense of what I have to give this world, what I want out of life, and how to care for my physical and emotional well-being. When I was 25, I felt a bit like “a plastic bag, drifting through the wind” (thank you, Katy Perry), but at 35, I feel more like a sailboat. I’m now more capable of channeling the winds of life and propelling myself forward in a desired direction.
- Wisdom: Becoming a widow is a form of mental and emotional boot camp. You have to learn how to cope with intense grief while also remaining a functioning adult, which is incredibly difficult! While I keep saying that I feel like I’m in my 20s again, there are also ways that I feel like I’m in my 40s. Because I’ll be honest, everything I’ve been through in the last year has resulted in an accelerated maturation. I now see very clearly that in my 20s, I was a bit naïve and irrationally optimistic about particular things. While I will always be an optimistic and hopeful person, I now see things more pragmatically as well. And I will be capable of making wiser choices as I relive my youth again.
Back to the Future
For many months, this sense that I had somehow been transported back in time was wildly disorienting. But now that I’ve accepted it as my reality, I’ve found a rather exhilarating sense of wonder about the whole situation.
My mother-in-law says it very beautifully,
Erin, you get to live two lives in one lifetime!
It’s a rare opportunity, and I’m going to make the most of it.