the day of my 25th birthday, i wake before my alarm does. somehow, by design, we spend the afternoon rushing from place to place — at the train station, we end up at the same platform twice. for vanity’s sake, i spend the evening in the back of a cab stuck in bangkok traffic with hot tears in my eyes — the pre-dinner cut and blowdry was a miscalculation. i worry i have ruined my birthday again, the way i seem to do every year. if it’s happened this many times, i must be the problem. there is so much that is irreparable about me.

the year that my pre-frontal cortex is supposed to develop fully, i still feel everything too deeply. at my big girl job, i burst into tears for the first time out of anger and feel immediately stupid; my feelings are too raw and too green for something as white-walled as a corporate office. sometimes, all it takes to set me off is a full laundry basket after a long day (a wash cycle is 45 minutes and it is already 11.30pm). i cry at the parts that i’m not supposed to during action movies. i buy a double-sided Monchhichi shirt with my whole chest, only to feel small and uncertain at the train station near work. my palms are always still too clammy to engage in handshakes.

i wait for ‘25’ to arrive, but i don’t think it’s supposed to. i think some parts of myself were decided at 15, and other parts have either taken a different shape or retreated into oblivion. i’m as stubborn as i have always been (prideful leo x argumentative aquarius x the Ram placements); i always go back to the same songs i discovered when i was 14. i used to want to be spontaneous and unpredictable, but now i use excel sheets in a personal capacity and feel calmer when i have enough supplies to make the same sandwich three times in a row. in the way that i always was, i don’t know how to relax. there are certain things i now know how to do, sure, like saying no, asserting myself in a professional way and how to hand-sculpt an amateur bowl out of clay. i’ve lost some of my brazenness and the cadences of my youth, but i still feel as hungry as i always was. i’ve seen the people i love leave (by air-borne vessel or otherwise), and with them, who i used to be. sometimes i miss them and sometimes i don’t.

mostly, i’m discovering that i do not need to live in metaphors. sometimes kimchi soup can be kimchi soup & sometimes we can’t finish it all because we’re full and we’ve had what we needed. sometimes survival feels humiliating and sometimes it can be sweet and simple. we wash the vegetables we hand-picked and cut the roots off and wait for the soup to boil.

at other times, it can be an earnest piece of work. i clean the home i’ve made with the man i love and buy real, solid furniture for it, the kind with screws and multi-part instruction manuals; i couldn’t have done it if i hadn’t learnt to wipe dust off the dormitory shelf at 19, or hauled 33kg of my belongings around a foreign country at 22. i remember the first sick meal i cooked, all on my own — watery soup, undercooked noodles and sausage discs that weren’t the right colour. the go-to sick day recipe is now rice vermicelli, minced meat, chicken stock and (poorly-)julienned ginger. the truth is, no home is permanent. i’ll pack up and go again; start again on a random tuesday. i’ll unwrap grief only to find it stuck to joy. ten years ago, when i’d asked the sky for a home through my tears, i didn’t think it would mean sitting cross-legged on the floor holding a pair of jeans taut while the man i love tries to yank the rivet off. we see rats on the way home sometimes and the horror somehow finds a way to laughter. in a way, it always does.

i’m scared of new things. the Future is tangible and i have to make detailed plans for it. the lines on my parents’ faces are deepening with every birthday; another friend gets married. i’m still too intense about most things. there is no mystery about my person, and i can see how someone else might find it insufferable. anger grips me quickly, the way it gripped my mother. i still feel too small for lots of things. i worry often about not making enough of a living or name for myself. i know more things and in some ways i know less. i still want too much, but i don’t know which desires are mine and which aren’t. yes, the details are excruciating.

i’ve made so many messes and i’ll make so many more, but i now know how to tuck myself back into bed at night. i’ll still lay awake for a long time before i fall asleep, but i do eventually. my knees make a noise but i can also hold myself up in new ways. i miss my mother’s house but i also love the life i have away from it. let it happen / let it go / “Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror.” (Rainer Maria Rilke) if i get to come home every night to my lover and giggle over food with my friends every once in a while, i think it’ll be okay. everything changes but something always remains. what a joy it is to have lived it anyway.

i am worried sick to my stomach that i am not doing the things i should be, but how great are the detours? i would trade nothing for them. as we passed by my old hall room on my sister’s move-in day, i imagine my 19 year old self still sitting there at her desk with her blu-tacked fairy lights and debilitating anxieties and i wish her well. i don’t want to change anything. everything is impossible until it isn’t. i’ve now lived enough years to know that. how unfavourable are these conditions; look how much has sprung out of it, regardless.

here are some moments from my birthday that i’d like to remember forever.