Then, as now.

In my mind and in my mirror, I've been 22 for the past three years. The picture I conjure of myself in (increasingly frequent) introspective moments is not my current self. It's a picture of me when I was still an undergrad, just learning how to write, not concerned with practicality, aware only of the most present and immediate aspects of life: family, friends, school, work. If I consider how others perceive me, again, I consider how they perceive my 22-year-old self...my hair then, shorter and pulled tight; my attitude, present and affected; my ambivalence to the future. But, I know my picture of myself is not accurate. I'm aware of my 25-year-old self. I call my mother after a long road trip not just to please her but because I recognize concern and because I know that I would appreciate a call, too.

Since 22, birthdays have lost a sense of hope and accomplishment. They no longer offer the promise of anything unless it is something you have to earn. 16 provided a driver's license, 18 provided independence (although none of us really wanted to have it) and a few perks (which none of us had use for), 21 provided drinking, status, adulthood. Every year after was vague; they held no "sure things," no capstones, no celebration other than mere survival. Even the milestones like 30 and 40 seem either too far off, too indefinite, or too old to think about. After 21, everyone is left to their own schedules, adding tick marks on their timelines as they go: graduation, job, marriage, baby, etc, etc. My timeline was filled with things that happened, not things that I had really set out to accomplish. I graduated, needed to pay rent so I got a job, was frustrated by the job and beginning to feel trapped, went back to school for some time to figure it all out.

Now, I exist in this in-between space, a place that feels so much like 22 because of the academic calendar, the undergraduates trolling the halls and gym and bars, the wide-eyed quest for knowledge and the indisputable and temporary gift of creativity and craft as first priority. While I live here though, I must live within the boundaries: Rent, jockeying for and pumping quarters into the two washers and two (insanely inefficient) dryers in the laundryroom down the hall, heat paid by my landlord and therefore controlled by my landlord, conversations with academics who take themselves way too seriously.
These parameters are what makes me think of myself as I was three years ago. I know exactly how I've grown since then, what I've learned, what I've done, what I've experienced and all the ways that I have matured, but my gut reaction is always me as a 22 year old.

I'm more than half-way through my time here, which means I'm on the downslide, which means I've got to start thinking about the afterwards. I've got to start thinking of myself as 25 going on 26. I will be 26 when I graduate. Just four years from 30. I've created a timeline for myself, re-laid the tracks that kept me in line for so long and kept me looking ahead while fully aware of how far I'd come. The major tick on my new timeline, in bold, black Sharpie, is: first baby by 27. This implies a number of things: a job and a house and a husband; my second baby by 29. I would call these goals, goals that exist in the real-world. They hover just outside of the school bubble for everyone to see, but are distorted by the curve, like a finger in a fishbowl, present but foreign. But I feel my perspective sharpening and the closer I get to the future, the clearer it will be.