This is 26.

This is twenty-six. And you’re writing from a coffee shop where you sip iced tea and pick at a croissant that is old and stale, that you bought knowing it would be old and stale...

The Perfect Thing

This is twenty-six. And you’re writing from a coffee shop where you sip iced tea and pick at a croissant that is old and stale, that you bought knowing it would be old and stale. But it’s your birthday, and eating chocolate croissants on your birthday is a tradition you’re trying to keep from when you were a kid. So you go to three stores to find one and eat it here, at this picnic table, washing the dryness down with iced tea, thinking of your family who have all expressed their birthday wishes through the phone.

This year, you’ve watched the gap between friendships widen as the trails of life seem to stretch and curl. Your friends begin to come out as themselves. Those who quietly went to church for years begin to call themselves religious. Those who always hated going to bars stop. Those who never wanted to live here move. It’s a beautiful thing to watch your friends find comfort in the way they always were. And yet, choosing comfort drives you further from each other.

You’ve begun to realize that lifelong friendships will become tight friendships loosely held. That we’ve always been family, waiting for true family to come. And family is coming now, slowly. Friends are finding their people, moving in together, getting engaged, sharing dogs.

This year, you felt conviction for the first time in a long time, in not a thing but a place – Brooklyn. Walking down Berry Street in Williamsburg, you are constantly reminded of how much you love it there – the emptiness of the streets, the endless supply of coffee shops with space to write, the waterfront breeze, the friends who reside nearby. The invigorating chaos of the big city is within reach here, but so is the ease of escaping it. You found an apartment that looks like it’s from a movie set – with fifteen-foot ceilings, exposed brick walls, and one built-in floor-to-ceiling bookshelf. Within this space, there is a place for all your things. And when you’re home, sitting on your big, blue couch with the sun shining in, you feel like you’ve found your first perfect thing. Ironically, next year, Brooklyn is the only thing you’re really changing.

This year, you learned how to cook broccoli so the stalks aren’t raw, how to ration iced coffee so it doesn’t taste like brown water, and how to Dyson your hair so it looks like you tried. You stopped wearing clothes that were broken. You started reading again. You renewed your passport without help – new photo and all. And after prodding from your friends, you finally bought your first clothing steamer. Now, you no longer shower with your dresses.

This year, when you remembered to, you began applying retinol to your forehead and contemplating aging. You stare at yourself in the mirror for longer and wonder if you should take more photos of yourself to look back on. You joke with friends about entering your twenties’ back half and point out how much younger you are than everyone. You’re young for your grade. You’re moving slower. It feels lucky.

You’ve begun to realize that you still have no idea who you are or what you want, but that every day, you gain a better sense of who you don’t want to be. And that this is a compass in itself. You’ve learned that there are not decisions to make. There are just chapters to unfold. And if you plod along on your own route, following your instincts like cairns on a winding trail, you will come to a clearing and find yourself waiting there, sitting on a boulder in the sunshine. And she will greet you with a shoulder squeeze and say, in that upbeat, energetic tone you always hear yourself use: “This is where you were meant to meet me all along.”