If my younger self could see me now, she would certainly have a reaction.
To live in a city like this one—so full of broken bottles from dangerous, alive nights; empty iced coffee cups from lonely, aching mornings; young writers desperate for a book contract (each one sure they deserve it most, though I actually do)—is to free oneself of the burden of identity. It is also, and remarkably, to have that identity harden into that of a woman who is distinctly her own, independent of others’ choices and desires. Some days I feel that I am no one, others that I am two women. The city fuels me as much as it drains me. Time goes on, yet it is also flat, solid, and completely still—like a rock, or any piece of furniture.
It’s hard to believe that I’m almost the age that I am. I am so old compared to how young I used to be, yet so young compared to how old I will one day become. And also, when one ponders the tormenting concept of special relativity, I am in many ways ageless. (A tired astronomy professor explained this concept—that the faster one travels the slower time passes—to me when I was a sophomore in college. Minutes later we became intimate. I forget his name.) Perhaps that age—my true age—comes from my relationship with the people I love.
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