I turned 25 tonight on the subway, as the D train sailed over the Manhattan bridge. In my arms: a bag of laundry and a bouquet of daisies, a gift to myself. When I bought them, I suddenly remembered another New Yorker and how she dubbed them the friendliest flower. Sometimes, when I am just a little sad or lonely, I like to imagine myself as a post-Frank Navasky breakup Kathleen Kelley, arranging her bookshelves or walking purposefully around the Upper East Side to the Cranberries. 

Where was I? 25. Twenty five. How can that be? I find myself a restless twenty five, though I sleep easily and endlessly and at every opportunity. I am altogether unkempt and inconvenient. Always just a little bit wrinkled, eyeliner smudged, nails chipped. I avoid solitary cab rides, vegetables, and overcrowded bars. When you are younger, you imagine your life at twenty five with the sort of careless hopefulness one projects upon the distant future. You imagine that you will be rich. That you will be loved. That you will be thin, and poised, and successful, and your hair will finally swing like a Pantene commercial. You do not imagine that you will still be leaving your clothes on the floor. You do not imagine paying for renter’s insurance, or sobbing in the bathroom at work, or scrubbing your own refrigerator. You could not have imagined it. How could you?

But child, look at you. You are a woman, more than you’d like to believe. You have your own apartment. You buy groceries and black blazers for work. You wear heels for twelve hours straight some days, and then you go to a bar where the Irish bartender knows your name and makes your whiskey sours strong and cheap. You call your parents. You go to meetings. You know how to make your toilet flush when the chain gets caught in the tank. You’ve bought furniture and lectured on film theory and more than once you’ve kept your cool in front of a movie star. You no longer write poetry, but you do write checks, and here and there a scathing email. You are not grown up, but you are growing up.

Whatever it is I have or haven’t become, I am still the same emotional girl I have always been. All of our insecurities, the crowded hopes and embarrassments and slights never leave us. We don’t even become better at hiding them. The difference is that now I know it. And when, at twenty five, I find myself anxious and insecure, I will put on my black blazer, the one with the silver name tag, and say with more patience than confidence, “Alright then. What’s next?”