hello, level 25.

or — on hitting quarter of a century, and a homecoming to the written word

“You’re turning 25. How do you feel about it?”

Four days before my birthday, my younger sister asks this question. Outside, thunder rumbles with the drizzle of a summer storm in July. I vaguely hear her over the sound of Utada Hikaru blasting through my earphones, so she taps my shoulder, asks again.

“How do you feel about turning 25?”

The answer escapes my mouth before I could think deeply about it — “nothing special, really.” I wasn’t able to see her face when I made that reply, already turning back to the work I was doing before she asked her question, but I hear the “Ngi,” and the patter of footsteps as she leaves my workspace.

I think nothing of it until today — the day I turn 25 — as I try to jot down an introspective about turning a year older.

There is an almost reverent buzz to turning 25: quarter of century, frontal lobe fully-developed, settling down and have some form of stability, the cutoff age that Leonardo Di Caprio is willing to date somebody (ha!).

Here is the bottomline: I am 25, but I still don’t know what I’m doing.

There is no manual on ‘How to Adult’ and yet there is this unspoken timeline filled with checkboxes on what you should achieve when you reach this specific age.

Get married; start a family; climb the corporate ladder; take a second degree. Some start a business, move away to somewhere new. Milestone, after milestone, after milestone.

To be fair, I understand the feeling of chasing the deadline: loved ones grow older, opportunities grow more competitive, responsibilities pile up. Stability is the name of the game, even more so if you’re the breadwinner and the back-up plan. As the eldest daughter in a middle-income Asian household, I am very well aware of the weight I have to bear.

The amount of decisions to make is overwhelming and confronted with the pressure of which one to prioritize is paralyzing. Settling on a decision is a delicate balance and you cannot CTRL + Z anything in case things don’t go your way.

It’s hard to figure out what it means to be 25 years old.

However, amidst the uncertainty, there are still things that stand out crystal clear to me. You’ve most likely heard of these in another shape or form, but in case you need reminding (like I do) — I’d like to share them with you, too.

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People will come and go, and you will have to learn to face the heartbreak on your own.

I’ve mourned my own fair share of departures over the course of 25 years — grandparents who passed before I could remember them, childhood friends who moved away. My deceased godmother who I bonded with our shared love of reading. University batchmates who braved some of the stormiest nights of academia together with me, returning to their hometowns or flying to the Big City (Manila).

Most recently, I still am trying to grapple with the loss of an aunt who was a crucial part of my formative years and the primary reason I am who I am today. This one hits the most and I still catch myself crying on a random Tuesday when I remember her in the littlest of things like the color green, or at the sight of freshly-cooked laswa.

Ocean Vuong once writes about grief as “a final translation of love”. The absence and the grief that follows is a proof that there was love, and in a way that soothes me. While I can no longer see most of the people that have left, I still wish them all the best in whatever they do in life.

Your dreams will look a little different than what you wanted when you were 15, and you are allowed to grieve the person you couldn’t be.

At 15, the vision board I presented for a class project contained the following: famous writer (bestselling underlined three times), post-grad straight after college, travel the world.

Now, I am 25 and nowhere near the person I wanted to be in my vision board — recovering from writing burnout, corporate slave, still living in my small town. It’s a far cry from the ideals of the teenage me.

Translation: I don’t know what I want to do, or what I want to be. I’m lonely. (source: 9 Border by TBS)

It’s a normal occurrence to have your goals change once you step into adulthood and get hit by a much-needed reality check. But give yourself time to be sad over the person you didn’t get to be.

Cry if you need to, but also give yourself grace. Your priorities might have changed but the path ahead of you is also full of possibilities. One step at a time.

Listen to your body when it blares the warning signs.

Growing older comes with it a lot of changes to your body. So when you are given the time to rest, take it — or else your body will decide it for you.

I’ve had a harsh wake-up call about this, coming from last year, even. For the ease of mind of everyone, it’s not life-threatening, but I’ve been dealing with illnesses that require medication and frequent lab tests and examinations. It’s stabilized and eased down a little bit since I’ve started on a lifestyle change.

This is a reminder to take your rest days, do your stretches, go on a daily walk. If you can, take an annual physical. Your body is not the same as you were when you were 15, it’s time to start taking care of it.

Hold on to your hobbies. They will keep you sane.

what i aspire to be, if you care. (source: "The Mice at Work: Threading the Needle," The Tailor of Gloucester artwork, 1902; watercolour, ink and gouache on paper. © Tate / Beatrix Potter: Drawn to Nature at the Victoria and Albert Museum)

There’s an unpleasant expectation that once you hit your middle 20s, you’re expected to grow out of your hobbies — and I never understood that logic.

If anything else, with the amount of worries and responsibilities headed your way as you age, I highly encourage you to keep your hobbies. Pick up a book, binge a show, take a crochet needle, learn a language. Embrace the outdoors, take up a sport, go on a walk. It can be anything you’ve wanted to try or something you wanted to go back to. I’ve weathered a storm too many just by escaping to my books or series, by losing myself in the motions of cooking or (awkwardly) learning a new dance.

Life already is challenging to face every single day, why deprive yourself of something you love?

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Yes, I am 25, and yes, I still don’t know what I’m doing.

And yet strangely, I take comfort in that realization. To quote Charlotte Eriksson: “I have hope in who I am becoming.”

I have a whole life ahead of me — a whole lifetime of making mistakes, of discovering, of figuring out to do. Timelines vary from person-to-person and each one of us has our own pace.

A dear friend once wrote me: “Life is a marathon, not a sprint.” With those words, I leave this to you as well.

In magic and mayhem,

Juri