They all say that “it gets better” but what if I don’t?

When am I gonna stop being wise beyond my years and just start being wise?

“You’re an old soul.” “Wise beyond your years.” “Impressive for your age.” “Very mature.” “I mean, I just assumed you were older than me!”

These refrains—from my parents and teachers and bosses and colleagues and, later, social media connections—should have been motivation to grow further. (If I am here now, where could I go next?!)

I instead took them as permission for stagnancy.

“You are doing better than your peers” people said subtly (sometimes outright). And because I was so often complimented in regards to my age, I believed I was ahead. Of course that begs a question: Ahead on what route? “Ahead” implies a straight-line trajectory I and my fellow students were supposed to follow, which is something I don’t even believe in—and yet that’s how I felt. At age ten already part of a competition. At age ten already ahead of the pack.

At age ten convinced I would stay there indefinitely, no matter how many times they read us The Tortoise and The Hare.

When am I gonna stop being great for my age and just start being good?¹

We had a poetry assignment when I was in the fifth grade. I loved everything about it: getting to write for fun in the middle of class, hanging our art on the walls, inviting parents for a celebration, perusing everyone else’s words. I wrote about capturing a dark fairy (loosely inspired by Neopets, lest you think I was actually arcane or profound) and my dad was shocked by my piece. Impressed in the way that made me—his little girl, desperate for pride—preen.

His voice takes on a similar tone when he talks about the picture of a shoe I drew in kindergarten. “It actually looked like a shoe,” he emphasizes, gesturing about, trying to explain how little the other five-year-old’s drawings resembled anything in the real world. My parents talked about this occasion for years afterward. Once I asked my mother what career she imagined for me, back when I was small and she knew me best, and she answered “an artist was one of the first things, because of the shoe.”

These memories are fuzzy both in clarity and countenance. Decades later I still feel warmth looking back on them.

But then I wonder: Is that all I’ll ever be? A kindergartener who drew her Reebok sneaker more literally than her peers? A fifth grader who better imitated the poetry she’d read?

I do not want that in my obituary.

And I wake up in the middle of the night
It’s like I can feel time moving

Always I have been young, thanks not only to my last name (oh, the jokes over the years!) and summer birthday but also the habit of using my older sister as a benchmark. I was the youngest member of our local waterskiing team when I started climbing human pyramids at age seven. (I stayed among the smallest until I finished high school.) I graduated college a year early at twenty. (I could not legally drink a single day I attended UW–Madison.) For three years I was the youngest employee at my first “real world” job, a digital marketing agency where bosses and colleagues felt vaguely like uncles and aunts. (We once had an intern older than me.)

It was not just that I was nominally young, though. There was something about my outward youth—obvious enough that last year a barista asked if I was in high school—that contrasted against my inner world—reflective and awkward, coming off a little reserved—and emphasized both. Two years into starting my dog’s social media account, a stranger told me that from my writing alone she’d assumed I was much older than 23. How could someone with so little life experience discuss so many things?

I took this as a compliment. I am wise beyond my years! I declared yet again. Look at me: I do not understand “the kids”. I do not use trendy slang. I am not active on TikTok. I am an old soul in a young body—a cute girl contemplating philosophy—and oh, what a delicious combination in which to take pride.

What a dangerous combination in which to take pride.

Because if you obsess about being young—if you believe you are impressive only because you are young, only in comparison to caricatures of other kids your age—each year eats at your identity.

If you aren’t young anymore, what are you?

People love an ingenue …
Will you still want me when I’m nothing new?

In three months I will wake up and look around and it will have been a decade since I turned 18 the summer after graduating high school, since I worked as an AmeriCorp tutor hastily eating lunch in a borrowed car between shifts at the middle and elementary schools, since I nervously attended college orientation at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, since I spent those final weeks in my hometown wrapped around the finger of my then-boyfriend (now ex-fiance).

I am not foolish enough to declare 28 old. I have hesitated to write this piece for weeks, abandoning the stream-of-consciousness idea in my drafts, because it’s rich for a woman to talk about aging when she’s still in her 20s.

But my relationship with youth feels increasingly fraught. I am still the little sister, the youngest daughter, the baby of my friends—but I am no longer ahead.

How did I go from growing up to breaking down?

My favorite client tells me I am professionally impressive for my age. “You have so much of the important stuff figured out already,” she says. I beam. She is worth looking up to.

But I do not feel professionally impressive. I feel increasingly professionally lost, making enough money to get by but often second-guessing what I am putting out into the world, what I most want to do, why I can’t seem to finish my book manuscript and start querying literary agents. Will this be the work in progress that dies with me? Will I literally take my dream of becoming a published author—a dream that hundreds of thousands of other people have accomplished before 28—to the grave?

Ah, the book manuscript. That’s mostly what this (*waves arms wildly*) is about.

Years ago I picked the arbitrary number of 27 years old as a goal for a bunch of things. I did not make this decision with any thought, and I knew that—I threw darts at the metaphorical wall because I just needed something to look forward to—but it turns out it’s easy to internalize even arbitrary goals. Sean and I said we’d live in a van by the time we were 27. (Success: 25.) We figured we’d be married by then, too. (Success: 24.) And I said I’d publish a book. (Not a success.)

And publishing a book, if it’s something that happens at all, is not a quick process. Even if I get an agent and find a publisher who wants my ramblings about dogs, there will be months and months—possibly years plural—of preparation before the words I’ve written exist in a tangible form you can buy at a bookstore.

I recently read an essay by Lucie Eleanor about her own yearning to be a “young” writer. She is three years younger than me and already feeling these things—and if that isn’t evidence that I am behind, what is?

I cried the night I read her (beautiful) piece. When Sean asked, I claimed I didn’t know what the tears were for.

How long will it be cute? All this crying in my room?
When you can’t blame it on my youth and roll your eyes with affection

I’m beginning to worry the things I’m drawn to write about are childish. When Sean and I were 21 years old, reading philosophy and working so damn hard on our relationship—me from an abusive romantic past, him from none at all—I felt precocious.

Now it feels overdone.

An epiphany at 22 seems like old news at 27. I’ve been there, I’ve done that, and so has everyone else, right? There is nothing I could say that someone better hasn’t already said. And if the only thing making it okay for me to say the thoughts before was the mouth they came out of—the mouth on that young, young face—then surely they’re just cause for cringe now.

I have used my youth as a crutch. My age justified my cluelessness, my melodrama, my exuberance. Now I feel like a curmudgeon shaking my head at what I’ve accomplished: Not much, the venomous voice insists on a bad day. Not much at all.

And oh, even this essay, if that’s what you can call it, is so boring. Our society has been afraid of growing old forever. Villains in childhood movies have gnarled hands and gravelly voices; we do not take our elders seriously; here’s another girl who can’t approach her 30s without a jolt of panic. I am not special, and I have never been special, and I will not feel okay about my path through life—my momentum and lack of it, my accomplishments and blunders—until I embrace that truth with steady arms.

Maybe I can talk myself into it.

---

Me versus me, a (is it unhinged to talk to myself?) dialogue

Me: I thought I’d have done more by now. Who am I supposed to be? How much is enough?

Also me: But you’ve done so much! You interned at an elephant sanctuary. You started a social media community, mostly on accident, that ended up connecting with more than 30,000 real live people! And those people have more than 30,000 combined dogs who have somehow been touched by what you’ve shared! You built the healthiest relationship I can imagine with someone you love (and not just love but respect and grow with). You bought and moved into a van, and you’ve spent more than two full years traveling the country. You were successful in your agency job and then you were brave enough to go freelance. You have a life other people literally dream of?!

Me: But none of my pursuits have been that successful. There is always someone else—often someone younger—doing it so much better. Sure, I ended up with 30,000 social media followers… but a low engagement rate and inconsistent content focus and also too much of my mood tied to Instagram performance. I make less money with my freelance writing, even when putting my heart into it, than some people I know who casually create TikTok content on the side. I still haven’t finished my book let alone found an agent who will stand behind it. And living a life people literally dream of is one of the problems! It makes me feel ungrateful. Like a fraud. Like I have been telling everyone I am successful—pretending to be successful—when I am really not.

Also me: But you get to choose your own definition of success.

Me: Yeah, I know. And some of my confusion here is that a lot of the time I do feel successful! At least in a few ways I really care about… but then not at all in others. I’ve done so much more than I thought I would by now but also so much less. Does it even out?

Also me: What does “even out” even mean? Expectations, reality—you know this thought spiral doesn’t go anywhere. What about are you happy? What about do you love your friends? What about do they love you? What about are you satisfied with what you put into the world?

Me: Maybe I haven’t been feeling good about what I put into the world.

Also me: That has nothing to do with your age. That’s you. Your work, your behavior, irrespective of years you’ve gone around the sun.

Me:

Also me: Do something about it.

1. Lyrics throughout from Olivia Rodrigo’s “teenage dream” written by Olivia Rodrigo and Daniel Nigro (2023) and Taylor Swift’s “Nothing New (feat. Phoebe Bridgers) (Taylor’s Version) (From The Vault)” written by Taylor Swift (2021).