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While brainstorming for my first Voices article this semester, I found myself rereading the pieces I wrote when college was still new enough to feel like something from a movie. One line from the first article I ever wrote stopped me: “I entered college believing in my ability to create and reinvent myself.”
Twenty is a decidedly consequential number by convention. It marks two decades of time on earth, which means that by now, I must have collected a lot of important things that offer me instructions on how to live, and that these things must make me more differentiated, more intelligent and more sensible.
Take a look at this laundry list of notes on love. Sit back and enjoy the ride.
To raise this younger generation to see snow only as a source of wet socks and chapped faces would be something of a tragedy.
Last weekend, I was convinced (read: dragged) to go out by a high school friend who was in town. So I left the comfort of my stuffed-animal-filled bed and put aside my sacred 9 p.m. bedtime to go out on the town and relive my undergraduate days for one night only.
In the midst of the crowded Rec Center, there is one place that contrasts the noise of running treadmills, shoes squeaking on the court and weights clanging together: the pool.
My lunchbox has gotten heavier since sixth grade. Alongside the sandwich, the chips and the juice box I now carry the heavy knowledge that every choice I make has roots and ripple effects: a history and an origin of production, a contribution to climate change and gender politics and fair labor practices and the ICE raids.
I just have to remind myself that calcification is a good thing — setting in stone a 20-year old me doesn’t mean that I can’t grow a new layer of “Shreya”-ness. Maybe “finishing” a layer of myself doesn’t mean that I’m “finished,” too. Maybe it just means it’s time for a new layer.
Maybe I should use that train voucher. But I kind of just want to play The Sims.
It scares me to think of the possibility of never properly celebrating the New Year again, as irrational as it may be. It feels like the older I get, the further I’m slipping from my heritage.
So I find that sometimes the “making” of life is the act of sitting in the dark and trusting that we are becoming something better as time moves on. The blender eventually went silent, leaving the kitchen in a ringing quiet. Then, the jars were lined up like soldiers, ready for their long winter wait.
Defining what we want requires thinking and soul-searching. It’s much harder and more uncomfortable than taking action to stay busy. Yet the consequence is regret — the kind that stems from knowing that our hopes have collected dust.
Somehow, the chaos of travel had shrunk into the small space between us, captured and organized by fifty two pieces of paper.
Here is my letter of cluttered thoughts about you, finally. Nanjing, thank you for being my first home, even if I spent years trying to convince myself you were only a dream.
She was so open and honest in our conversations, and it really takes a lot of courage to be able to do that. She’s been through a lot in her life, but that has not stopped her for a second from trying to be the most positive person she can and trying to share her love with others.
For as long as I can remember, home has looked like an Orioles cap, a goofy grin and the combination of a tightly clasped handshake with a heartfelt, all-enveloping hug.
I tend to throw myself in deep and give everything I have until I am completely spent. Then I take a short break to recover and do it all over again. I thought this was simply how I worked best.
I’m sure each of us carries certain moments that briefly pull us back and leave us with an unidentifiable ache.
Growing up, snow was something I only ever saw in movies: a white blanket covering rooftops, kids laughing as they tossed snowballs, families sipping hot chocolate after coming inside from the cold. It didn’t feel real to me. It felt like something that happened somewhere else to someone else. But all of that changed when I moved to Maryland.
