27.

according to a buzzfeed-adjacent article i read last week, the consensus reached by my fellow gen zeds and millennial cuspers is that adulthood doesn't truly begin until age 27.

my mother had 3 young children by the time she was 27. her mother had 4.

so many of my teenhood heros lived prolifically creative lives by the time their physical lives ended at 27.

i lost two dear friends, one older & one newer, within 3 months of each other in 2022. they were both 27.

this post goes out to all of them.

image caption: Jimi Hendrix playing his guitar in a garden. from https://flashbak.com/tea-for-two-the-last-photos-of-jimi-hendrix-alive-by-monika-dannemann-52535/

beware of things that come in 3s. (or is it good luck when things happen in 3s?) 27 is divisible by 3, 9 times. my last year of life divisible by 9 was 18, that age we're all told that adulthood begins (at least here in the U.S.). i remember the night of my 18th birthday marching righteously up to the counter of the 8th ave. 7-11 and shakily asking for a pack of Marb red 100s. (i'm sure at the time i fully enunciated the word maur-ull-BORE-oze) i didn't yet know the smoker's ritual of packing the box against one's hand an arbitrary number of times with an arbitrary amount of force. i greedily tore off the plastic and did my best not to squish the tightly packed heads surrounding the one that would pop my cigarette cherry. i pinched and pulled the chosen one til it wriggled free from its clutch. (to this day i have no fucking clue how you're supposed to get a cigarette out of the pack without smushing it) doing all that while walking, i paused to light up, feeling the freedom of being able to accelerate my death and increase the chances of developing lung cancer in a future inconceivable to me at the time. it was fucking disgusting. it burned like i was inhaling the sparks, little twinkling embers traveling down my throat and starting a forest fire in my bronchioles. still i puffed, all the way down to the filter, savoring this first choice i had made in my newfound adulthood. everything that came before didn't count.

image caption: baby bina at A.J.’s first wedding, pre-consciousness

i stood on the crest of 8th ave looking out at downtown seattle on a saturday night. a spectacular view from the littered sidewalk-less roadside of my smaller/less cool hometown. in the city lights i saw the potential of my life, the great things i could do. therein lied the problem. there was so much i wanted to do, but i had no idea how to make it happen. i had no sense of self to help steer me. i didn't think i was good enough at any one thing to be able to pursue it. i didn't think i was good enough.

that was 9x2. here i am now, 9x3, and i'm just beginning to come out of that belief that i'm not good enough. like removing a crunchy crusty musty veil away from my face, saving myself from a suffocation of my own making. i quit smoking, too.

image caption: the parting veil of clouds, from the ferry on the way home last week

in the absence of myself, i looked elsewhere. because i did not know me, so much of the 9 years between 18 and now was spent pining, pleading, pleasing, and bleeding over men who did not know me either. i'm still recovering from that throwing about of my body and soul for the sake of others at the expense of myself (then unknown).

when i was 21 i had a friend who was 28. she was kind and easygoing and effortlessly funny. she knew herself.

almost every time i hung out with her i would ask her if she was seeing anyone, or interested in anybody. she would answer no, and i would react externally with my greatest attempt at nonchalance, but internally with bewilderment. i was amazed that this incredible woman, of an age bordering that "inconceivable future" i mentioned earlier, could possibly be single, let alone be content with being single. my mother and aunties had only ever modeled serial monogamy, and my grandmother… well. my grandfather divorced her the year i was born and she had lived a lonely, and what i perceived to be miserable, life ever since.

that friend told me about the overtly sexist and racist environments she'd endured in her male-dominated fields of work. she told me of the abusive relationships she survived when she was my age. all the horrendous shit she'd suffered at the hands of men.

but it wasn't until she told me straight up that she was focusing on building a solid foundation in her career before she would put any focus on building a life with somebody that i realized my habit of asking about any possible romantic interests might be a little tiresome. how many people did she have to field those questions from? was her life not interesting enough as it was? not as valid without a man to attach herself to?

image caption: sheep from A.L.’s farm (and me before i knew better)

i am 27 now, single. i finally fucking get it. i don't exactly have some burdgeoning career i'm passionate about. i hardly have a  job. but i've got a notion of what i want to do with my life, lucrativity be damned (publishing this post is a huge step towards that).

at 9x2, that legally smoking not-yet-HS-graduated adulthood age, i was "dating" (in quotes because being obsessed with a man you met online who lives across the country and paying for every flight and hotel room to make seeing each other possible can hardly be considered DATING like???) a man who was 9x3. a whole multiplication table ahead. half of my life older. it only ended when i turned 21, by turning to another man even older than the last. the further into my 20s, the older the men got. (as it turns out, i wasn't just looking for myself, i was looking for my father, too. but i'll save those insights for another post)

though they were vastly more experienced than i, we always seemed to even out on the emotional intelligence scale. i suppose they were with someone much younger for a reason. i did whatever i could to make them stay, even if it harmed me. i would choose them over me, every time.  

image caption: bina, age 19, smoking a cigarette. from C.D.’s archives

let this year of my life be an end to a long and arduous journey of not choosing myself. perhaps that is what adulthood truly means to me. to CHOOSE my life, rather than to just let life happen to me. being a tiny passive creature in this massive galaxy was never my only option. i can take an active role in making things happen for myself, for my loved ones, for the good of the world around me and for posterity.

i detach myself from the idea that i need to be in a relationship to be fulfilled. i am letting go of the toxicity modeled for me by my family. i release myself from the chains of generational abuse and neglect.

i choose myself. i know myself. today, i am 27.

HELLO ADULTHOOD!!!!!

hello, future.

i can conceive of you now.

🫂