Sometimes I think life is just a circle of forgetting yourself, and then remembering yourself. I seem to do this periodically: forget myself briefly. But it always inevitably leads me back to remembering everything about how I am at my most basic. It feels like this: I decide I am done with being the way I am but then I walk only three blocks and I turn a corner to get a shock like running into an ex. The funny thing is, though, it isn’t an ex there, but me. Frustrated, I am angrily waving at myself:
girl, you forgot about me??
I think I can leave myself behind and I certainly try sometimes. But, inevitably around each corner: there she is.
It is me.
Recently, in an era of dreamy summer Scotland socializing, I forgot that I was an introvert.
Sitcom summer, meet-cute summer, the summer of Great George Street. The era was known by many names, but what it consisted of, from mid-June to mid-August was a series of house parties, whole (Sun)days in the sun at the Glasgow Botanic Gardens, and designated third spaces: namely InnDeep where flatmate/ friend Magnus works. Like a season off of Friends, there were bombastic inter-friend-group-make-outs, side characters, and a few recurring motifs. Evil hampsters, chalance, and the trials and tribulations of thinking women are devestatingly beautiful were some of the main themes of these months and it was, certifiably, the time of my life.
As the sun rose after the scene cut on the most recent house party, the flat (and a few more main characters) agreed: “last night was a sitcom”.
And it most certainly was.
But
Here’s the thing:
no one thinks about what the sitcom characters are doing in between episodes and now, after six weeks of living as if every weekend was a sitcom episode, I am telling you… there are definitely weeks of low-grade, routine, hard working time in between each eventful episode. Because no one— no one — can live in sitcom summer forever.
A few weeks ago I declared to Magnus, “meet cute summer is over”. What I meant by that is: I need a break.
I’d rounded the corner after leaving my introverted self at home, but she’d given me a jumpscare after I turned in my APR (Annual Progress Review) two weeks ago and headed to Manchester. Suddenly, on the train, in my friend’s bedroom, at the little cafe that we always went to, on the Saturday night, I could feel introvert Ada rising. Protesting. Waiting for me just around the other block of the building.
There are times for socializing and there are times for being alone. I was rounding that corner.
My life this summer has been everything I could ever want it to be: fun, hilarious, filled with people.
But August has arrived, and with August comes my yearly reflection. 25 years old this year in a few weeks. Frontal cortex developing. PhD 8 months old. My life in Scotland is nearly two years now (with a few months off here and there). Everyone in Michigan is getting married, or on their third child.
I am turning 25 and I have heard that 25 is the year that everything settles. The year that you remember yourself, that you become fully yourself in many ways.
So, with two weeks left of 24, I have one week of PhD work and one week of walking around the Isle of Arran. Then it will be August 22nd. I’ll be 25. Then, it’ll be Autumn.
Turning of seasons and I come back to myself. Days are shorter now — I can finally see darkness again — and I breathe out a sigh of relief.
I turn the corner, jumpscare, but then look straight at the girl standing there: I like her, I am proud of her.
To forget her is temporary, and I feel lucky that all my life is a never-ending cycle of turning the corner. And there she is!
