twentyfour

each year, I make a playlist full of songs i adore at that age. listen to how twentythree sounded to me here while reading along. enjoy <3.

I woke up twentyfour in the south of France. The sky that morning felt like I was dreaming. The clouds were golden from the sun rising in the soft blue sky. I couldn’t help but stare out the window, noticing how the light cast a soft shadow on the pastel buildings, noticing how life in France felt different, noticing how this birthday felt different. I felt different.

Twentythree was complex, and my emotions were even more so. A whirlwind of tender moments: moments of love and fear amidst anger and joy. Moments spent in ballet classes, jazz bars, foreign countries, and coffee shops. Moments primarily spent trying to figure out what twentythree was supposed to be. I spent the first nine months of twentythree missing how it felt to be a kid, yet feeling like I was forty-eight. I was living somewhere in the middle of how old I felt and how old I was. I spent a lot of time in a mild existential state, trying to put a finger on what life held in store for me. I turned to writing and found a spark there I hadn’t seen before, not since I was a child anyway. I wrote daily, trying to make sense of my mind. Joan Didion wrote “I don't know what I think until I write it down,” that resonated deeply. When nothing else about twentythree was making sense, the writing was there to be my translator. The more I wrote, the more I understood what was happening internally. The more I was starting to understand how it feels to be twentythree. How it feels to be young.

I remember the day I finally pieced together that twentythree is young. It was June, I was swimming in the Mediterranean Sea, off an island in Greece (wild). I was floating, letting my body exist, my mind rest. The moment still feels so vivid: a wave was washing over me, and I wondered why I couldn’t have more moments that felt like this, so free. It was a moment of clarity, of realizing how much time I have to be and do what I want. I hadn’t let myself realize this before, I was spending twentythree trying to be so much older than I was, avoiding the reality that time is abundant. For the first time, I realized how much time I had: time to write a book, have a career, discover new cities, to be young.

It was a moment of release, a moment where I distinctly remember granting myself permission to feel and be wildly young; to finally be twentythree.

Twentythree was for understanding the complexities of youthfulness, and the eternal nature of it too. For understanding I am as young as I let myself be, so let’s play. Let’s dance around in our kitchens to sixpence and none the richer. Embrace spontaneity. Kiss the people we love. Heal our wounds, while remembering they aren’t everything. Let’s breathe and release. Let’s laugh until our bellies ache and let’s say what we mean to say. It’s never that deep, life is so rich when we remember how fun it is, truly fun. Twentythree became a favorite age for that reason, for discovering play and youthfulness. for letting myself be my age. 

I came to realize, I wasn’t missing my youth in the first six months of being twentythree. I was missing out on acting my age. Twentythree was for discovering what a gift this is.

How acting our age is an internal permission slip to slow down, and stay here at this point in time for a while. A reminder that you have learned so much from where you have been, and you’re still flowing, growing, being.

There is such beauty in finally being my age. In knowing that it is independent of what everyone else my age is doing. In knowing that I get to write the story for what a twenty-something-year-old Camille does while reminding myself to laugh a little and dance even more. I feel so lucky to be in my early twenties, and I feel like I’m there too. Finally.

It feels good to be, truly be, here.

Then three months later, I turned twentyfour. I was heartbroken, dramatic yet true. I had finally let myself be twentythree, nine months after my twentythird birthday, feeling the most joy I had in a while, embracing all of my youth. I had grown to love twentythree dearly, and it felt so fleeting.

I woke up twentyfour, nostalgic for twentythree, yet what was true then still remains: let yourself act your age. I challenged myself again: what might happen if you let yourself be twentyfour? Just like you let yourself be twentythree these last few months? What might happen if you trust fall with yourself one more time?

On the day of my twentyfourth birthday, I bought myself a new perfume to remember the upcoming year by. I had wandered into a store selling French-made items and slowly found my way to the fragrances. There was one perfume I adored, it reminded me of Le Labo’s Santal 33, if it had more citrusy notes. I loved Santal 33 at twentythree, and this one felt safe and familiar. Yet it felt off for this upcoming year.

“Maybe you go for what you don’t usually pick out. That could be a nice way to remember this year. You’re in Nice, we have so many flowers here. Try this.” The woman helping me pulled a floral scent, not usually my preference. She was right. This smelt like the flower markets of Nice: light, floral, and ever so slightly woodsy. I thought about the fragrance, and then more about her choice of words. She was right about that too. I was challenging myself to meet this version of myself that is now twentyfour, to be open to what might happen if I embrace acting my age.

I bought the perfume, and with it, her advice. 

Twentyfour is for trying something different while holding close to me all of the beautifully ordinary parts of my world. It’s for trusting that so many conflicting parts of life can be true simultaneously. At my core, I know that the main ingredient to being myself, feeling like myself, is the fundamental fact that I am so many things — I am ever changing, ever growing. I have time for it all, if i let myself be here.

So today, I am twentyfour, knowing I am still every other age I’ve been too. I feel excited about play. About remembering my humanity. About remembering that it is a gift to not need to have it all sorted out, no one ever does anyway. And it is such a beautiful thing to think how far I’ve come; all the lessons I’ve learned, places I’ve been, books I’ve read, songs I’ve played, dances I’ve danced, words I’ve written, sentences I’ve spoken. All of it has led me here, and that is worth so much. And there is still so much more, and time really is abundant. I am here, understanding how young twentyfour feels already. How playful it’s been, it’s going to be.

To twentyfour…and trying something different. I am already so thrilled to meet this version of myself.

xoxo

camille, 24 years