third year priya desai

i. when i was born, i came out with the umbilical cord wrapped around my neck and tied into a knot. i think there’s a metaphor in there somewhere.

ii. i’m almost 21, which is the opposite of 12, the worst year of my life; yet somehow, sometimes, i feel so small and still like my 12-year-old self, which is a horrible feeling.

iii. from a young age, everyone told me i was sensitive, said it like a bad word, and so i tried very hard to be different. but it never worked! so i think it may be time to accept my thin skin, like paper, and to continue believing that most people might feel better if they allowed themselves to cry just a bit more.

iv. if my 12 year old self could see me now, i wonder what she might say. probably something mean, because she’s a middle school girl. but i think she’d be impressed with me too, with the fact that i am writing down thoughts that other people will read, and that i once got 600 likes on a tweet of a plate i made, and that at 12, i hadn’t yet met people who would love me so deeply at 21.

v. honestly, i’m not sure i was ever supposed to be anything other than a teenage girl, not that i was any good at it. if you asked me my age, i’d still answer, “eighteen.”

vi. sometimes i worry that i’m a narcissist, because i love to talk and think about myself, or at least i find myself doing it more often than i would like to admit. once, henry told me that i talk more than anyone else he knows, and i’ve been insecure about it ever since, even though he meant it as a compliment. isn’t it funny how that works?

vii. freshman year, i thought i was going to spend college working towards medical school, until my first pre-med class promptly convinced me otherwise. now i study advertising. i’ve never known what i was doing, and i find it funny how hard we try to convince others that we do.

viii. sometimes i wish i still wanted to go to med school. sometimes i wonder if i ever even did. sometimes i think that i swallowed all of my ambition, and now i am never hungry.

ix. the more i think about it, the less sure i am that i know what narcissism even means. is there a different word for my constant obsession with what other people think of me? i don’t care about being beautiful (that’s a lie), but i want to linger. to be the glitter stuck in your hair, the eyeliner on the back of your hand, the ghost behind you in the mirror. sometimes i swear i can see my younger self looking back at me. i want to be permanent, to either be in your life or haunt you forever.

x. i like to think the universe talks to me. to me, this is normal and makes sense, because i’m the main character of my own life. maybe the universe is talking to you too, sending you signs in the ways that it can. maybe you just need to listen.

xi. some days i wake up and wait until it’s socially acceptable for me to go to sleep again. some days are just about getting back into bed and trying again tomorrow.

xii. you missed it because you were looking at your phone, but the universe whispered to me. it said: everything will be okay. every past version of you still exists, watching you with hope and wonder and admiration, and you make them proud.

coming of age