vienna waits for you

third year priya desai

photo by catherine campbell

slow down, you crazy child… 

i’m in between therapists right now, which means that everyday, i listen to vienna by billy joel at least four times and try to picture myself as the main character in a young-adult coming of age film who is finally beginning to figure her life out. if you haven’t had the privilege of listening to the most therapeutic song ever created, i strongly urge you to take a moment (3 minutes and 34 seconds, to be exact) for yourself right now. 

you got so much to do

and only so many hours in a day

the first time i ever heard vienna, i was visiting my sister at her college apartment. i was a middle schooler, meaning that my life sucked, so we watched a rom-com i had never seen: 13 going on 30. i so desperately wanted to be thirty, flirty, and thriving, to have it figured out, just like jenna rink—before she actually wakes up at 30 and ends up crying on a train back home to her parents while vienna plays, realizing her life is nothing like what she imagined it would be. 

dream on, but don’t imagine they’ll all come true

it’s been years, but i still think of that scene often. these days especially, i feel 12 going on 21, and i’m not sure my life is anything like what i imagined it might be back then. if you told me at 12 that i’d still be in the (now blue!) state of georgia, living with people i went to high school with, and writing an article about myself that other people would actually read, i would have assumed you were playing some sort of joke on me. 

take the phone off the hook and disappear for a while

it’s alright, you can afford to lose a day or two

one of my new years resolutions has been to spend more time alone. these days, i’ve been spending hours with my phone off, completely disconnected from the world around me. it feels alien to me, as someone with perpetually six hours or more of screen time everyday. i’m trying to learn how to live life on my own terms again, without the constant obligation to everyone else, the way we all did as children.

you can get what you want, or you can just get old

i remember being 12 and listening to vienna by billy joel, certain that no one had ever felt as Seen by one song as i was in that moment. and i’m sure i’ll remember being 20 and listening to vienna during every car ride, despite the protests of my friends. and someday, when i’m 30, i know i’ll still be listening to vienna, being reminded to slow down every once in a while and let the future come as it is. a lot of days, this unknowable future is terrifying, hanging ominously over me, despite my best-laid plans. other days, i am grateful to be certain that i don’t know what lies ahead, to live my life as it is, knowing that vienna waits for me.

when will you realize… vienna waits for you?