“When your vinyl and your coffee collection is a sign of the times
You're getting spiritually enlightened at 29”
Ever since I was little, I’ve aspired to be a “Birthday Girl” kind of person. I love the idea of birthdays because I’m actually a greedy little goblin child at heart. The pile of presents, the shiny balloons, cake and ice cream and pizza and junk food, the texts and cards and proclamations of love. I love that on your birthday you can get away with almost anything, that people are required to cater to you and your needs and your desires. I love that you get tangible proof that you are loved, that you made an impact on someone else’s life, that you are A Good Person. But you’re also allowed to be ridiculous, unhinged, selfish, rude, all because it’s the anniversary of the day you entered this godforsaken world. Birthdays are the one day a year we are allowed to love ourselves with reckless abandon and nobody can tell us otherwise.
Unfortunately, all of this makes me incredibly uncomfortable.
I am not, in fact, a “Birthday Girl” kind of person. Rather, I’m a “Please do not perceive me” kind of person, which is actually the worst thing to be on your birthday.
A few months back when I was talking to my therapist, we were going on and on about all the things that trouble me, and the two of us came to the conclusion that I do not like being seen. Or perceived. I don’t like when people Know me, I don’t like when people thank me or compliment me or buy me gifts or pay attention to what I’m doing or ask me personal questions or talk to me about art I’ve made or or or. (You may see how this is a problem for birthdays.)
I always assumed this was because I was “shy,” but as I get older, I’m realizing that “shy” kids are more than just shy. Shy is just a term people use when you don’t talk in big groups or you’re uncomfortable around people. People call you “shy” because they want to shame you for being standoffish or anxious or alone or quiet or confused or lost. It’s a term that lends itself to introverts and autistics and closeted kids and marginalized individuals and disabled persons and people who aren’t fluent in the language (literal, figurative) of the majority and all the people who are on the fringes. When people called us shy as kids, what they meant was “Aw, you’re different and that’s so endearing, but it makes us uncomfortable, you need to fix that.”
I grew up feeling like Violet from The Incredibles or Mia from The Princess Diaries. Invisible, forgotten, sat on. I wasn’t unloved, and plenty of people knew me fairly well and they did not forget often about me. But in most settings, I was the quiet shy girl in the background, and I liked it that way. Being invisible is comfortable because you don’t have to worry about other people worrying about you. If you’re forgotten, nobody criticizes the things you do or expects you to do spectacular things, you can just do your own thing and let yourself exist in peace. Of course, being an invisible child and teenager (and adult) can be lonely and sad. If no one is taking the time to See you, it can feel like you’re not a real person.
Part of the problem is that when people do take the time to witness you, there’s a huge possibility that they will perceive you incorrectly. It’s better to be invisible, to not be seen at all, than to be misunderstood.
I’ve always relished in being invisible because if people couldn’t see me, then they couldn’t misunderstand me. And as someone who is Not Typical (not straight, not neurotypical, not extroverted, not conventionally attractive, etc), I grew up constantly needing to explain myself. I felt like I spent a lot of time trying to convince people that there was nothing inherently wrong with me, I was just different than my peers. I liked being alone, I would rather read a book than watch a basketball game, I didn’t like speaking up, I wasn’t interested in boys, I often liked things that were deemed immature. I wasn’t bullied per say, but my family and friends were nothing if not sarcastic, and I’ve been fluent in the language of playful teasing ever since I was born.
And even when people were being kind to me, I still felt like they didn’t really understand me. I’d get coerced into doing things I knew I didn’t want to do by my friends, or I’d get gifts I knew I didn’t want to receive from my family. I’d talk about the things that interested me, but I’d get scoffed at or reprimanded or nobody would want to listen. And so instead of being louder, I shrank myself. I became even more invisible, existing only behind closed doors or in the corners of my mind, and I allowed the people around me to get away with some strange kind of murder. I knew they didn’t mean it, I knew they wanted to love me, to see me, to care for me, but they just wouldn’t listen to me. Very few people could bridge the gap.
Over time, that invisibility made me uncomfortable with attention of any kind. In part, this was because of the fear and distrust that comes with any relationship, but as my relationships became more trustworthy, I was uncomfortable with attention because it started asking things of me. I couldn’t just coast through life anymore, being invisible, doing things of my own volition. Suddenly when people started caring about me and my well-being, I had to think about my needs and my wants and my schedule and my wishlists and my social battery and a million other things that are a result of being in relationship with another person. It didn’t matter if Solo Me wasn’t sure what restaurant would make her happiest because she’d just make a decision and I could deal with the consequences, but if Friend Me was asked what restaurant would make her happiest, suddenly it’s an Impossible Task that could result in serious consequences for everyone involved. The weight of the decision becomes so monumental that the answer is actually no restaurant because I’d rather do literally anything than figure out What I Really Want under pressure, especially when someone else is forcing an answer out of me. (Sorry, I’m a Taurus.)
Being invisible for such a long time meant that I had long ago stopped thinking actively about what I wanted or even what I needed. I can’t articulate it to outside sources, and most of the time I’m so automatically inclined to fulfill my own needs and desires that by the time someone asks to fulfill these things for me, even from a genuine place of kindness, I have nothing to say because I already did it myself. (I was always the person whose name was on every single part of the group project.) At my darkest, it’s hard to trust people to fulfill my needs (for obvious reasons), but even the thought of my closest, kindest friends doing things for me feels wrong. Like I’m a burden. Like I’m asking too much. Like I’m incapable. Like I’m handing over something precious that somebody else might break. Trusting other people is hard, but putting that trust into action and letting those people actually take care of you is a hell of a lot harder.
I’ve written essays before on how unloveable I feel, how I often feel like a selfish person, how I feel like I’m the villain in a lot of people’s stories…but it doesn’t get to the heart of my issue which is this: I am deeply uncomfortable when people See me and Love me and Accept me as I am. When I hide myself away am I protecting the people who love me or am I just protecting myself? Have I become so dependent on my invisibility that allowing people to see me is viewed as a threat by my brain? Why is it so terrifying?
True, this could be an essay all its own, but it’s such a huge piece of my birthday puzzle. The other day a friend texted me that she “would love to celebrate [me] as much as possible for [my] birthday” and I broke down into sobs for a full ten minutes, suffocated by panic and stress and overwhelming emotion.
A strong start to birthday week, I know.
I kept telling myself I was overthinking it, being ridiculous, that she literally just wants to show me she loves me because I am actually a great friend and she loves my company and isn’t that amazing! No, Brain said, that is the worst thing I’ve ever heard, we cannot let her do this. It’s like I hit the self-destruct button and that was the end of it. Do not pass Go, do not receive silly little birthday presents, immediately feel overwhelmed with no explanation. Great. Thanks.
Florence does a great job explaining it in “Girls Against God,” like I do actually feel like I’m being crushed when people do these kinds of things. But sometimes I don’t. Sometimes it’s okay and I can take it. And I think most of the time when that happens, when I can tolerate it, it’s when I’m feeling lovable. It’s when I know I’ve done something that gives me the permission to accept the praise, the gift, the compliment. Maybe I started crying when I got that text because I felt like recently I’ve been unlovable, I haven’t contributed a lot to the conversation, I’ve been spending more time alone because I’m overwhelmed from work, I feel like a boring person with a one-track-mind and that mind is either screaming about Taylor Swift or a fictional sports book that only one of my friends actually cares about.
Because if I’m completely honest, I do think I know what I want and need. I’ve been the one person I can rely on for the last twenty something years, so I am pretty great at knowing what I need and when I need it. The problem here, and the reason I am so afraid, is that I’ve been shamed for the things I want and need, so if I let somebody in, what if they ruin everything? What if I need to be loved delicately instead of engulfed in a tidal wave? What if a tiny droplet of affection feels like an ocean to someone who’s been thirsty for her whole life? Or what if I’m overthinking this so spectacularly that I do want a tidal wave, I’m just anxious about how I’m going to survive the rushing water?
I think I get caught up on the idea that letting people love you is a gift to your loved ones. That sometimes a person giving you a gift is not about the gift you receive, it’s that they get to give the gift to you in the first place. Sometimes your mom making you dinner or mailing you a card is not necessarily because it will bring you joy (even if it does), it’s that she has a lot of love to show you and that’s how she is choosing to show it. This is why I have a hard time with gifts, with acts of service, with all the love languages…because who am I to deny someone from loving me in their own way? But then I start to think I’m the bad guy for not letting people love me. (Maybe you see why birthdays have become so torturous.)
I am in survival mode, trying to let myself be visible after years of hiding myself away, but anytime I poke my head out and let the spotlight light me up, I am immediately crushed under the weight of all my favorite people screaming at me, hugging me, gifting things to me, wanting to hang out with me, trying to prove that they know me better than anybody else. And for a “Birthday Girl” kind of person that would be such a wonderful feeling, like getting a big hug. But for me, all I feel is that I’m being suffocated and smushed and buried under an enormous weight. And then I feel guilty for feeling all those things. And then I tell myself I’m being ridiculous for feeling guilty for feeling all those things. And the cycle goes round and round until I cannot appreciate anything and so I have to go hide away in my hole until everyone leaves me alone.
What a wretched existence.
It has always frustrated me to no end that other people are not only comfortable with all the attention on their birthdays, but they relish in the spotlight. Plenty of my friends celebrate extravagantly, with huge parties and festivities, and whenever they post about it online, I am utterly confused. Again, the concept sounds great, I love seeing themed-parties and big dinners and huge get-togethers, but any time I think about doing this myself I feel like I’m going to throw up.
I’ve done big celebrations in the past. Every few years or so I get the idea that maybe if I just invite all my friends to one big hang, maybe this time I will feel fulfilled. Maybe this time I won’t be massively uncomfortable in a group of people who all want to celebrate me. I had a talent show when I was fourteen with over a dozen friends from all areas of my life, and by the end of the night I felt like a complete ass. When I turned twenty-three I did a huge photoshoot for all my friends, and I got those obnoxious number balloons that make the rounds on Instagram, and in the end, I had more fun taking portraits of each of my friends than when they gushed about how much they loved me and appreciated me. I actually hate being the center of attention at parties.
I don’t know if it was easier to have big parties when I was a little kid. Maybe all the presents and awful icebreaker-like games made up for my intense discomfort. Maybe I didn’t really know how I was supposed to feel or how I was even feeling in the moment, and so I let these parties happen because my parents were excited or because I wanted a fancy birthday cake or because I at least got to hang out with my friends outside of school. But over the years, my birthday parties got smaller and smaller, and I always had more fun when I hung out with two friends rather than fifteen or twenty.
So what do you mean people can go into those situations and leave feeling energized? Happier? Loved? It does not make sense to me.
And yet, somehow I still feel like the oddball. Shouldn’t I enjoy getting gifts? Shouldn’t I feel overjoyed because my friends want to spend time with me? Why am I so uncomfortable when someone gives me a present? Why do I feel like curling up in a ball when I know people are going to text me that they’re happy I was born? I know I’m “shy,” but what is there to be afraid of?
To me, birthdays are riddled with anxiety. I don’t fear getting older - at least not right now, I’m very excited to get out of my twenties next year - and I don’t really hate myself as much as I used to. But this is the time of year when my friends start texting me, “Don’t worry about the tickets, I’ll just buy yours for your birthday!” and “So how are we going to celebrate you?!” and “Keep an eye on your mailbox, I sent you something.” Instead of getting excited about my special day, I just feel stressed out and guilty. Most of the time it seems like what my friends want is to give me a gift that will wow me (I’m the most difficult person to shop for), write a card that will make me cry (I do not react well when opening gifts or cards, although make no mistake, I adore when my friends write me novels), and celebrate by going somewhere a “normal” person would celebrate their birthday (places I actually have no interest in for the most part). They want to smile at me and sing happy birthday and tell me how great I am. They want to spend time with me because of course, you spend your special day with your special people, and why would anyone want to be alone to celebrate their birthday?
And here I am, the biggest bitch in the world for not knowing how the fuck to handle any of that. For wanting to spend some time alone. For wanting a perfectly normal week where maybe I get a piece of cake and a nice text message and a gift card that I can spend all on my own. No fanfare, no grand gestures, no acknowledging Who I Actually Am. Or! Worse! Maybe I’ll tell you that’s what I want on Monday and then by Thursday I’ll be so distraught over not having a flashy, over the top birthday and not receiving nearly as many text messages as I had hoped, that I’ll be mean to you because it’s your fault I don’t know what I want for my birthday! And then I’ll feel like a hypocrite or a liar or at least a wishy-washy fool, and I’ll shut myself up in my room and cry.
The worst birthday I think I ever had was when I turned 26. Granted, it was not objectively a bad birthday. My parents came to visit me since it was still pre-COVID-vaccines, and they tried very hard to get me a cake and some presents and we had a silly little celebration in my apartment. My roommate was a great sport, trying to make me feel better when she knew I was anxious the entire day. Unfortunately, I spent most of that birthday crying in my alone-time.
I cried the night before. I cried the morning of. I cried later that evening after everything was over. I could not stop bawling. My emotions were all over the place, I felt sad and upset and frustrated and defeated, and more than anything I felt guilty. There was this intense shame eating me from the inside, that I wasn’t appreciative enough, that I didn’t deserve to be loved since I was so selfish for wanting to be alone on my special day, that I was being difficult and emotional for no good reason. A lot of the feelings I had that day were variations of self-loathing. But in truth, I wasn’t crying for no reason.
If you’re from the United States, you know why 26 is significant. That’s the year when kids are kicked off their parents’ health insurance. This may sound like a ridiculous thing to get worked up over, especially since I am a relatively healthy twenty-something who grew up privileged with no major disabilities, but the anxiety ate me alive. I was working a low-paying barista job part-time, which meant I did not have healthcare from my employer. I barely knew how insurance worked (still don’t, honestly), and I did not have the money to afford it either. The closer I got to 26, the more terrified I became. And on the day itself, I reached a boiling point.
I won’t bore you with the play-by-play, but by mid-day I was sitting in my living room, tears building up behind my eyes as I tried not to cry, while my parents spent an hour emphasizing how important health insurance is and how I need to be able to afford things on my own. That if Being an Artist wasn’t paying the bills, I should probably think about picking up more barista shifts and putting my dreams on hold because I need to be able to pay for things.
Obviously, I knew all this. I spent the entire conversation dissociating, embarrassed that my roommate could hear every word that was said, feeling not only misunderstood but utterly alone.
My parents love me a lot, and I know that everything they do is an attempt to keep me safe and make me better, but goddamn, that day is burned into my mind. Neither of my parents has ever gotten their health insurance from the government, so as lost as I was, I couldn’t really ask them for help because they knew as much as I did about the whole thing. And while they meant well — reiterating that things cost money and what if I somehow ended up with appendicitis — it was absolutely the worst way I’ve ever spent a birthday. My horrific, gut-wrenching fear of appendicitis continues to this day.
So really, it wasn’t my fault I felt bad. But then, again, why all the guilt?
I felt guilty on my 26th birthday because deep down, I did not want to spend my birthday like that. I couldn’t tell my parents to their faces that I didn’t want them to come to visit for my special day, even if it wasn’t necessarily about them or their presence. I couldn’t tell my roommate that I wanted to be alone rather than stay up and watch a movie with her, even if it wasn’t about her at all. I couldn’t turn down the gifts my mom got me, the decorations she had brought, the cake she had made from scratch. And I definitely couldn’t tell my parents that I refused to talk about health insurance on my special day. All my choices were taken away from me out of sheer politeness, and I was frustrated and sad and overwhelmed, and all the while, I felt like the bad guy. I needed to let people love me the way they wanted to love me, even if it harmed me in the process. I felt guilty that I felt like I was hurt at all. It was my birthday for fuck’s sake, I should just let people love me.
A lot of neurodivergent people - and girls specifically - grow into people-pleasers because it’s the only way they learn to survive. Many of us are conditioned to believe that being selfish is a bad thing, that “Catholic guilt” is real and God will only love you if you’re a good person, and the best way to succeed in life is making other people happy. We are taught to shrink ourselves because we’re too much for this world, and then the world is shocked when we are shy or quiet or invisible. We try to put other people first, to be kind and nice and good, to be compliant and appeasing, but it does not do us any favors. The world around us does not care how much good we do if we continue to be atypical.
To have a self-oriented birthday goes against everything I was taught when I was a kid. My entire personality was conditioned to recoil from self-advocacy, self-love, self-obsession, so it’s no surprise that when my birthday rolls around, I feel ashamed of being born. All that shame has corroded my inner world, and as I continue to rebuild myself throughout my adult life, I have to remember that it may take a long time to be whole again.
What’s more, as I am a very atypical person, that means that my birthdays are going to be celebrated atypically. And that is not only okay, but it’s a good thing. It’s no wonder I never enjoy the types of birthday celebrations everyone else has - I rarely enjoy the things other people do, at least not in the same way.
My favorite birthdays are generally the ones that I spend with one or two people, where I’m doing something I really enjoy or have planned something extra special that I’ve always wanted to do. For better or for worse, some of my best birthdays have happened when I’m not quite the center of attention, where I share the day with someone else or I do something that isn’t all about me. (It’s difficult to know if this is because I was raised to resent the spotlight or if I do genuinely just love other people. It might be a little of both.)
There was one year when I got $50 from my grandparents and I bought myself and my two best friends Bratz dolls because I didn’t want to play alone. When I turned sixteen, I celebrated at school because we had a party in my English class in honor of finishing a huge research paper project. When I turned twenty-four and twenty-five, I made plans to hang out with one of my Instagram friends and I didn’t tell her until we were literally together on the day that it was my birthday (and yes, this happened two years in a row). For my twenty-seventh birthday, I got to stay in my friend’s family’s beach condo for a few days with some of my best friends, and the best part, in my opinion, was that I got to give my friends a free beach vacation. The day I turned nineteen, I had just gotten home from my first year of college and my best friend surprised me at my house (I cried) after my parents told me they were going to buy me my first car. Last year, I got to go behind the scenes at the zoo and feed the red pandas with my best friend.
I’ve spent a lot of time dissecting my birthday, trying to determine the perfect formula for a day that won’t disappoint me, studying my favorite moments and the things that make me happy, and even now, I’m still unsure what I want. I never actually know what I want, or if I do, I second guess it over and over and over again due to other people’s meddling, and that makes it hard to advocate for myself. If I stopped second-guessing what I wanted, I could commit, I could fight, I could put up a fuss and it would get me somewhere. But the truth is, I’m throwing spaghetti against wall trying to figure out what actually brings me joy. I am so enamored by other peoples’ birthdays because what if a dinner party would actually make me happy? What if a vacation to the Pacific Northwest would solve all my problems? Maybe this time, if I go to that bar with my best friends, I’ll feel less like a burden and more like a person. Maybe if I plan the right day, craft a perfect set of circumstances, I’ll finally deserve all the love that’s been given to me.
In truth, I am still trying to feel worthy of love.
I’ve been told over and over again - directly and indirectly - that the things I want and need are unimportant, and therefore, I’ve concluded that I must be a burden to everyone I know. It seems like a heavy burden since so many people have such a huge problem with my need for alone-time, or my desire to only spend a day with one or two people at a time. Clearly, because I didn’t invite everyone to the party, I don’t care about anyone but myself. Obviously, if I don’t accept this gift that I did not ask for, I’m being selfish and ungrateful. How dare I not allow other people to love me? Who cares if the way they love me is not what I really want or need? I don’t deserve to be celebrated because I do not appreciate the ways people celebrate me. I’m the problem. I need to fix myself. I need to change my attitude. If I am compliant and polite, then I am not selfish and I am a good person.
What happens when the people who are celebrating you do not actually understand you? How are you supposed to accept love if that love is all wrong?
We’re all so afraid of being the Rachel Green of our friend group, returning gifts she does not want and being picky about the things that bring her joy. We can’t ask for too much on our birthday, lest people think we don’t care about anyone but ourselves, but if we do not ask for anything at all, somehow we’re still at fault. We exist in a paradox, living in an individualist west that preys on self-orientation and pushes for self-advocacy but warns against the evil of the Self, that reminds us we are all wicked in God’s eyes because we do not care about anyone but ourselves. We are not allowed to ask for what we truly want, and yet we are reprimanded for not appreciating the slop that is placed in front of us.
How am I supposed to feel worthy of love when everything is telling me I’m destined for damnation?
As I’ve gotten older, the only way I’ve learned how to feel worthy of love is loving myself. Not because I don’t have people who love me, but because I have not been able to accept love without seeing the good in me first. There’s that age old saying like “You can’t love someone else until you love yourself first,” and I know a lot of people think that’s bullshit, because in a lot of ways it is, but I want to change it a little: “You can’t accept someone else’s love until you love yourself first.”
That’s an overgeneralization obviously, I wouldn’t be where I am without all the love that’s been given to me, but it wasn’t until I started truly loving myself that all the love I got from other people started to feel safe and real. Sure, I’d get birthday presents and my so-called friends came to my birthday parties, but so few of them actually understood me because I didn’t love myself enough to let them. The more I hid myself away out of shame, the less these people could accurately love me. When I finally started to accept myself, to let myself be who I am, to love my body and my joy and my so-called selfish traits, I could let my friends actually love me back. I could accept that the love I was given was in full knowledge of the things I’d done, the “bad” person I was, the mistakes that I’d made.
I still have a hard time accepting gifts, but once I started telling my friends why presents are so difficult for me, because I loved myself enough to stop suffering through the same bad gift experiences, they heard me and changed how they loved me and it became easier to accept that love. Because guess what! It was never an issue of whether I was selfish or unloveable! It was simply that the love I was getting wasn’t the love I wanted and it made me upset! It became easier to trust the people who care about me, and through that trust, I stopped feeling so guilty because my reasons for “acting out” disappeared. No, actually you can’t spend my birthday with me because I’m going to spend it alone at a concert instead. No, actually I don’t want you to come over right now because I’m in the middle of an anxiety attack and you would just make it worse. No, actually I don’t have the energy to go out with you tonight, I’m sorry.
Maybe I’ll never feel fully comfortable on my birthday, maybe I’ll never really feel confident when people perceive me, but I’m closer than I’ve ever been and it’s because I’ve started to value myself more than ever before. I always thought I was selfish because I didn’t do the things people wanted me to, but the truth is, people saw me as selfish because my needs were different than theirs. Once I started to realize that my needs are not only important but valid and valuable, I stopped feeling ashamed of them. I stopped feeling bad when I needed time alone, when I asked for space, when I couldn’t feel my feelings in front of other people, when I wanted to do things my way. I’m learning to stop feeling bad for making myself more comfortable. I’m spending more time with people who let me be who I am without making me feel bad for how I live. And those people don’t get their feelings hurt if I spend my birthday by myself or with someone who isn’t them, and that’s huge.
Today I am 29 years old.
I am one year away from starting my third decade on earth, I am in the last year of my twenties, and I still am trying to figure out exactly who I am and what I want out of life. I am proud of where I am right now - living in an apartment alone, reading copious amounts of books, going to therapy - and for all the times I feel like a burden, I am learning how to let myself be loved as I am.
The secret to cracking your late twenties is understanding that a lot of the things you wished you could change about yourself in your early twenties…are actually the things that make you who you are. All the parts of me that made me feel unloveable are not so hard to love, in fact, they’re the reason why people stick around. I’m not as selfish as I thought. I’m not as bad at communicating as I thought. I’m not as unhelpful as I thought. I’ve just been seeing the world through one lens my entire life and as it turns out, that lens was a lie.
I’ve spent most of this decade trying to change myself. I wished I had more discipline, that I was more consistent, that I was more generous or more fit or more fearless. I taught myself how to cook, forced myself to go to numerous gyms, learned how to effectively build my own business from nothing. I tried to be skinnier, tried to dress prettier, tried to talk louder. I read self-help books and started going to therapy, I had long conversations with friends and had lots of hard conversations with my parents. I wanted to be a better sister, a better daughter, a better friend, in the hopes that maybe I would stop feeling so bad all the time. I got depressed in the summers and drowned in grief in the fall, and I spent years of my twenties waking up at the crack of dawn for work in the hopes that I’d have enough money to travel to see my friends. I wrote novels and poems and blog posts and captions and essays and reviews and journal entries and text messages and I wrote and I wrote and I wrote, as if writing would make up for how little I talked. I overshared so I wouldn’t have to be vulnerable. I put myself in front of a camera because then maybe people would finally listen to me. I people-pleased because other people always disappointed me and I believed it was my fault.
And I know now that change is harder than it looks, and it’s worth the work it takes to become someone new, but sometimes it isn’t exactly what you need. Sometimes you need other people to change for you or, at least, with you. Sometimes you can change yourself and morph yourself over and over again, and it still won’t make a difference if you hate your own company or if the people around you won’t let you change in their perception. Sometimes it isn’t your fault that other people feel hurt, even if they blame you for it. Sometimes all you can do is forgive yourself.
Here’s what I actually want for my birthday this last year before thirty: I want to stop feeling embarrassed and ashamed for existing. I want to spend my last year of my twenties with people who see me and I want to let them. I want people to understand me and cater to me because I’ve spent so much of my life catering to everyone else and dammit, I deserve that. I want to stop wasting all my time trying to “fix” myself when I could be doing a million other things. I want to communicate better, not because I’m bad at it, but because now that I know I’m good at it, I can see just how helpful and effective it is. I want to stop letting fear rule so much of my life. I want to let myself enjoy things wholeheartedly. I want to be exactly who I am, no smokescreens, no “I wish I was,” no psychoanalyzing, just the person who is living and breathing in this exact moment. I want to let go. I want to let go. I want to let go.