Release Your Inhibitions

My Quarter Life Catharsis

“Looking back, I think he’s the person who made me feel the best about myself,” my coworker said of a reality TV playboy almost thirty years her senior (so, playman*) that she briefly dated a few years before.

She didn’t know she was saying something profound when she said it, but then again, neither did I.

Here was this woman almost a decade my senior, whom I sit next to nearly everyday —bearing witness to the ups and downs of her characteristically disappointing dating life, on her quest to become a wife and mother when nearly all her friends have already achieved these milestones and moved away from the city or onto the next chapters of their lives— saying the person who nurtured her self confidence best was someone she had no real possibility of a future with.

And perhaps that was part of it, right? “He was like heroine,” she said, her eyes half glossed over in memory.

I laughed, but she doubled down. “No, seriously. It was intoxicating. He just didn’t care about anything; he was so free.”

“It actually makes sense,” I said, “it never even occurred to him to be self-conscious, which means you didn’t have to be either. His confidence, his easy self-assuredness, made room for you to feel that way, too.”

I continued: “It almost inspires you to be like that, no? Like, if we were that uninhibited, then everyone around us would have permission to just… be themselves,” I said, instantly animated by the thought. I still am.

Suddenly, it clicked to me: why a beautiful, comparatively young woman might spend her shrinking time with an older bachelor. He made her feel good. And not by way of compliments or presents; he made her feel free.

Of course, money was a part of that. Relative fame, too. And even I’ve found that relationships which are doomed from the start possess a certain glamour —in anticipation of their dreaded, inevitable end and in hindsight, too. A crash you can’t look away from, can’t stop, and wouldn’t even if you could.

Star-crossed as they were —with money at their disposal and fame in their corner— I still think there’s something there; that these were all just tools in a bigger, accidentally sacred occurrence.

A few months ago, when the 27-year-old who owns and trains me at my gym was still just getting to know me, he asked: “How old are you, again?”

“Twenty-four,” I said, almost challenging him to call me too young.

“Twenty-four…” he repeated my answer thoughtfully. “You know the thing about twenty-four? That’s about the time you stop caring what people think.”

I laughed and nodded, agreeing, but also wanting to think it through further.

Emilio could see the contemplation on my face, I suppose. “No really, you’ll see,” he said in that air of belief he has about things that do, typically, go on to come true.

(Maybe that’s the calling of a trainer: speaking and assisting possibility into existence. It’s no coincidence that he’s one of the most loyal readers of this Substack.)

In the months since, I’ve thought a lot about what he said, in relation to me. I’m not sure that I really care any less about what people think of me, in the sense that my desire for validation has somehow shrunk. But, I do think that as I become more myself, my desire to follow my dreams —to fulfill my purpose regardless of the cost— has started to remarkably overshadow it.

A few weeks ago, on Zoom with my weekly writing group (heart still swells just saying it), I was externally processing My Feelings™ about turning 25.

My peers, 27-35 respectively, all commiserated with me on the existential quality of aging. My main question was, has been, is: “When will I feel like an adult?” The results of my surveys have, so far, been inconclusive.

“I’ve heard thirty is when women lose their self-consciousness,” the one who’s not yet thirty but no longer twenty-five offered.

The thirty-somethings agreed. “Yeah, and it sucks,” Kerri said, “because now I have all of the confidence but not all of the hotness. My body is deteriorating!”

We all laughed. (Let the record show: Kerri is still, objectively, very hot.)

This conversation has stuck with me, too. They’re all in conversation with each other, really. Not least of all the man making the benchmark 24 and the women calling it 30(!)

They’re echoing this aha moment I had over my coworker’s age-and-fame-gap relationship: I don’t want to wait any longer to feel that freedom. And dammit, I want to take everyone with me!

My coworker stumbled upon this miracle accidentally and briefly, but if we could bottle up and sell the feeling of self-acceptance her old bachelor boyfriend unknowingly gave her, we’d be richer than him. Better yet: we’d pass it out to everyone as a precious gift, for free.

But that’s the thing, isn’t it? It sort of already is, free. I don’t need anyone, any age or elapsed number, any claim to that elusive idea of “adulthood” to be free. If I’m waiting for someone to give me permission to achieve my wild and daunting dreams, I’ll never find them —that’s an age I’ll never be.

But instead, if my flagrant protest of self-limiting beliefs could encourage the people around me to sigh in relief, to usher in self-confidence and belonging in themselves, well, then, I’ll be <3

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I have these conflicting beliefs:

1. Time is a thief

2. I’m still so young

Is it too soon to say I feel the contents of the hourglass slipping?

I’m in the middle; my mid-twenties. And I feel the bottleneck pressing in on me. Who am I going to be? What will I come out as on the other side?

It’s ironic that we’ve constructed this slow, claustrophobic middle just to get back to where we started: the sand pit. Our inner child; our forgotten bravery.

We’ve all somehow unwittingly agreed that the human condition is to not know better until it’s too late. Or, to have known something —been born with it— and then carefully unlearn it in contact with the outside world. Only to then return to it, this simple, freeing truth, once we’re finally old enough to get over ourselves —to remember.

But I’ve always been stubborn; I reject this. I want to be confident while I’m still really hot. I want to drag my childlike wonder, my defiant self-belief, with me through the cluttered quicksand of my entire life, all the way to my triumphant grave.

In fact, as far as I’m concerned, I was born yesterday. And I see it now, clear as the Monday afternoon I was born: this sublime state of permission.

My coworker experienced it by proxy; under the unsuspecting, welcome shelter of her lover’s umbrella, earned with age. Her self-doubt ran right off his water repellant material. She called it heroine.

The kids have a word for that too; they call it magic. The bachelor’s sensible, retractable umbrella is a mushroom fountain in a municipal kiddie pool.

Under it existed a different world; the curtain of water creating a noisy barrier between you and all the rest. If you cocked your head just right, you would never even hear your mom say it was time to go —perpetual summer.

Imagination was the only rule: tiny bodies were governed by the law of boundless possibility.

Press your sunscreen covered spine against the mushroom’s concrete stem, play mermaids. Stick your small fingers out to its edge, feel the rain on your skin.

No one else can feel it for you, but if you do it first, they just might follow you in <3

25 y.o. Birth Announcement

At initial checkup: 100th percentile for whimsy