Ever since turning twenty-one, I’ve felt time breathing down the back of my neck– his heavy, snarled voice mumbling into the ear I got pierced for the sixth time last Monday, grainy in texture, mildewy in smell. The ticking, do you hear it? Does it keep you up at night? Can’t you feel time moving? You should. You should feel like time moves beneath you. You’re only twenty-one for a year. And then twenty-two for a year. Same thing with twenty-three. It never fails until someday you’ve failed. 

Twenty-one means potential. Unbridled, unadulterated, untouchable, yet drainable potential. Potential to achieve. Potential to fall. There’s pleasure, pain, and fear in the potential. Potential and time– the two things promising to tie my shoelaces together and laugh as I sink into the sand. Here they come– the partners in crime!– threatening to get wasted at the prospect of growing older, of losing my novelty. 

There’s a particular glimmer in the eyes of young artists. Some eclectic, illusive force coerces the industry to look them in the face and bear witness to the broken pieces that formed the mosaic of a budding creative mind. The artist I’ve spent my life worshiping is Taylor Swift. As a disclaimer, I want to be very clear: this isn’t about the power of her lyricism and storytelling; Taylor’s a mere influence figure in the person I grew up to become. In a way, hours upon hours of listening to and internalizing her diaristic songs conditioned me. Growing up under her discography and immense influence on popular culture, I watched as she experienced things I was soon going to. I would someday turn fifteen and twenty-two, and when I did, I had something and someone to compare it to. In hindsight, and as something I couldn’t hate more admitting, maybe that was detrimental. Maybe having her same blue eyes, looming height, and blonde hair set me up to inherit her fears, whether this was conscious or not. 

But as I got older, my mind a needle, her music the thread, patterns of celebrated youth and prodigy emerged in the world around me, acting as the final nail in the coffin. Because how can one create art without pain? Without beauty? How could this beautiful young thing have experienced such life by only the age of twenty-one, twenty-two, or even twenty-three, leading them to create such multi-faceted art? She’s classically broken, she’s obviously beautiful, she’s an icon, she’s a star. She’s shiny, she’s new. She’s so young! So talented for her age! 

And she’s young enough to sell out if she really needs to. 

***

“People love an ingénue”

***

I think I’ve always felt pressure to be great for my age. Reaching achievements before anyone else has. Being the first one to find success. That’s a trailblazer; the path she took now on fire, rubber burning, and wind blowing through luscious golden hair that sweeps up against the small of her dainty back. A girl on fire, dancing across the finish line because she was just so far ahead of everyone else her age. It’s plagued me my whole life.  

Age eight: I wanted to be a singer. I dreamed of moving to Nashville just as a young, classically broken, obviously beautiful thirteen-year-old Taylor Swift had. My fingers bled teaching myself guitar, playing the chords over and over and over again until it sounded just right. My vocal cords numbed themselves after hours of sitting at the piano, practicing my rendition of “Our Song” for the musical performance I made my parents sit and watch once a week. In elementary school music class, the lessons we learned about the ukulele were serious to me. I brought my own from home, my peers snickering at me but not quite bothering to do so behind my back. Tears fell from wrinkle-free eyes as my ring finger pressed against the wrong key of my piano, but it only pushed me to try harder, to get even better. Music and the fantasy of becoming a singer was everything to me, and I acted as such. 

Years persisted until an eventual shame rushed through me as I realized I was nowhere near where I needed to be. I was already twelve, and success was so far over the hill that it had become a mountain. But there was Taylor, a 2012 Red Tour poster hanging on my wall like a crucifix, promising me that young stars fall to earth, somehow born shiny and new. I was so young, but I wasn't talented for my age. 

Eventually, I tore the poster down, insatiable in my sorrow. I was too late. I had passed my prime. By twelve, I was supposed to have moved to Nashville! I was supposed to be great for my age, reaching achievements only a few before had. “There’s no time clock to achieve.” “Success can happen at any age.” Try and say that to Taylor Swift’s hat hanging on a rung that says, “Youngest female to win album of the year at the Grammys.” There’s power in youth, in being successful from an early age. These stars, these icons, they’re mesmerizing. No one can keep their eyes off the beautiful young prodigy. 

One might expect me to empathize with my younger self; I tried so hard! I worked, I practiced, I improved. Was it too much to ask of myself to be everything at once? I’m not sure, but in retrospect, viewing it so far in the rearview, maybe (and it’s taking a lot for me to admit this), I replaced rose-tinted frames with a searing lens of pessimism and perfectionism, the durability of such a mindset proving itself weak after a decade of wear and tear. 

Contradiction riddles me. I was young, but I don’t think I was all that talented. 

***

“When did I go from growing up to breaking down?”

***

Age fifteen: Around the time I retired from my musical career, I’d been singled out as a promising young lacrosse player, my name infused with potential and ambition. Accompanied by the prospect of success, athletics overtook my vision, a now tunneled, one-track mind. My new dream, starting at the age of twelve, was to become a college lacrosse player and win a national championship. All my life, I’d known I was athletic. My brown belt in karate hanging behind my winter coats when I was nine. A collection of red ribbons hung upon my mirror, countless first-place adornations in middle school track and cross country. A four-minute mile time at age ten. My ten-month stint with Team USA’s junior national luge team when I was twelve and thirteen. One might say I had a natural knack for sports, I guess. With that ever-persisting knowledge, the only way I knew how to appease myself was to lean further into my abilities. 

Starting high school, my life became a revolving door of lacrosse practice, speed and power training, cross country in the off-season, and hours of throwing the ball against the wall in the rhythmic, repetitive manner that sharpened my catching, passing, and shooting skills. Then, by age fifteen, I’d signed up for the next seven years of my life, committing to play division two lacrosse at one of the best programs in the country. To the fifteen-year-old version of myself, it didn’t matter that if I missed a pass during the game, I would cry myself to sleep at night; it didn’t cross my mind to care about the fact that I wanted to play collegiate lacrosse for exclusively performative reasons. The only thing, and I mean the only thing, that mattered was that I was successful. They told me I was so young, so far ahead of everyone else. It was everything I ever wanted to hear. It was a holy hymn scratching records until it played like a funeral rite, marching me into a grave. 

At Grand Valley State, I didn’t even make it through my first full season of college lacrosse. In the face of a looming case of generalized anxiety and externally heightened pressure, I quit. But for a moment, I was so young, so talented for my age. And because I was so ahead of the curve, I was young enough to get out when I needed to. Wasted potential, they had said. She was so talented, so brand-new; what would she do with herself if she had already done everything she dreamt of? The shine is dulled, the newness has gone sour. Only so many chances are held out before the ingénue before she’s no longer that. 

But something within me had shifted. 

Tightly laced glasses rested upon the bridge of my nose, the lens chained to my eyes, forcing my mind into a landmine of taunting anxiety, plaguing failures, and never-quite-good-enough torments; yet, the lens of pessimism I masqueraded as realism and (un)reasonably high standards for myself had slipped  just enough for a clearer view to disillusion the voices of potential and time (those two besties!) SCREAMING in my head. A lack of youth or talent didn’t play as a God-like force in my downfall, pulling me away, clawing at what could’ve been. I didn’t walk away because I’d lost my newness and shine. No, I left because I was protecting it.  For the first time, stained glass cut on the shattered pieces of myself I’d devoted to becoming The Best; I realized that being so young, so talented for my age, being so shiny, so new, couldn’t save me from myself and the continually deteriorating self-image that hung over a neck untouched by time like a revolution-built guillotine. 

***

“I’ve never been a natural; all I do is try, try, try”

***

Writing is my grail, yet my creative publishing history lacks presence. I say this in the sense that I’ve never published any of my creative fiction or non-fiction before. I’ve tried. Of course, I’ve tried. And rejection isn’t the issue for me. It never has been. Not every writer or written piece would belong in every literary journal; not every novel strikes dollar signs in the eyes of every literary agent; not every attempt at success will stick– it’s not something that keeps me up at night or chains me to my keyboard, trying, trying, trying to write something that someone with power and influence might like. No, you see, the issue is that I’m running out of time to be seen as shiny and new. 

The literary world is a small one– it’s not highly publicized in the media, nor is it a true claim to fame; yet, like any artistic field, there’s uniqueness in naivety. There’s interest in the young girl who made it big, as she’s so young, so talented for her age. Every day that passes by, every moon that rises, every strike of midnight reminds me of the devastating fact that I’m getting older. That life and death and capitalism threaten me with all the time in the world as if that’s a blessing rather than a curse. 

All the time in the world? My whole life ahead of me? It provides countless opportunities to fuck up. To sell out. To not achieve. Because, really, do I actually have my whole life ahead of me? Or do I just have the next few years to solidify what the rest of my life will look like? Potential is a time bomb nagging you to speed up, and in the face of it, I feel slowed, its weight dragging behind me like the future lives I might not ever get to live. 

How long until I’m no longer an ambitious dreamer but rather a washed-up failure? At what point does the novelty of youth and beauty fade? When am I no longer the ingénue, innocent and wide-eyed? How starving do artists become? Will I become nothing but skin and bones, a shell of withering fantasies of my name on Barnes and Noble shelves, and my words like poetry on Pinterest boards? 

***

“I’m still on that trapeze, I’m trying everything to keep you looking at me.”

***

Job offers shared on Linkedin. Corporate money flowing into twenty-something teenager’s checking accounts. A new apartment in Wrigleyville. Business casual tweed sets sold on Zara. Life and death and capitalism offer all the time in the world, but I know it’s not true. The thing about money and Big Girl Jobs and being flung into adulthood is that pursuing a career and a life in the arts inherently comes along with a lack of money, specifically at the beginning. Corporate money and the chance to earn it breathes down my neck as heavily and as sickly as twenty-one does. American work culture places an expectation upon us from a young age; dragging our feet into a lackluster, nonfulfilling nine to five performatively drives the arc of our first years following undergraduate graduation. 

All at once, thousands of dollars flow into once bare bank accounts, freeing even the most privileged adult kids from daddy’s credit card. Watching it all go down in flames douses me in corporate gasoline. There’s a pressure, to put it most simply, to seek the financial security not provided by the life of a dreaming artist, placing a gun against my head in the dilemma of whether to sell out or try harder. It might not even be all that convincing that seeking out a corporate job could be considered “selling out.” However, from my perspective, choosing to pursue a traditional nine-to-five office job that provides financial stability feels like giving up on myself and the dreamscape I live in each night before I fall asleep. Time moves beneath me as if I can feel the earth rapidly turning each day and year. There’s time until there’s not. 

Twenty-one requires speed and agility, but art doesn’t conform to the traditional sense of time, does it? Another obstacle added to the race of “all the time in the world,” its hands around my throat, staring me into my bulging eyes, disappointed in the fear behind them. Hiding in the shadows of that fear lives the most likely version of my life, the one cowardice will succumb to when May strikes, and the prospect of moving back to my parents' house threatens me with the same force as my self-image. 

Let’s say, hypothetically, I “sell out.” The artist starves to death. The ingénue meets her demise. The voice of time and potential tells me how little of each I possess. I listen and believe it. LinkedIn links me with a job titled “Copy Writer” for some company we’ve probably all heard of– even Kraft needs copy for their boxes of Mac’N’Cheese. I accept begrudgingly. An apartment in the Upper East Side because I can afford it. Saving my capitalistic tainted money in an account dedicated to traveling the world. I work a normal schedule, live a normal life, have normal friends who also live normal lives, and work their normal jobs. Everything would be completely ordinary.

Eventually, I might fall in love. I have children– four of them. We move to the Chicago suburbs, where I grew up. I write punny taglines for Kraft’s Twitter account. Maybe I hate myself, just a little bit, thinking about all that I’d given up on. We have a Tudor-style house, probably in Hinsdale, IL. Five bedrooms, four bathrooms. An office where I work from home. A desk with deep drawers for deeply masked dead desires. I have enough money to support my children in whatever endeavor they want to dedicate themselves to. They get their ambition and determination from me; they don’t want anything they didn’t earn. I’m endlessly proud. I’m content. Life is fine, enough. It’s just life. Not a big deal. It turns out time moves faster the older you get. The lingering self-resentment fades into an eye-roll, thinking about how young and beautiful and shiny and new and foolish I thought I once was. 

This is the worst-case scenario. 

***

Age twenty-one: years away from the total destruction of a failed lacrosse career– poor piss attempts to create a version of my life I thought younger me would’ve approved of– the costumes of a discarded ambitious teenage girl lay crumpled on my bedroom floor, covered in cat hair and manuscript pages I can only dream of someday being published. An out-of-tune mahogany guitar painted in shades of rejection and discard. A royal blue and white jersey with my last name written across the back. A backlog of short stories and personal essays, too sad to see fruition. They lay in a grave beside my bed.

Last school year, I took it upon myself to write a novel, a story that’d been bubbling up inside me for years. Every single day, I’d write for hours, clicking at a keyboard that rolled its eyes at me, until (roughly) four months later, I had a completed 80,000-word first draft of a manuscript. Prose dripped like blood, spanning pages, weeks, and days until my burdens lay upon the shoulders of a fictitious girl with my gray-blue speckled eyes and lengthy, objectifiable legs. Three drafts later, unanswered query letters sent to literary agents scratch at my bedside coffin, bearing their rotten teeth, waiting for me to remember and fear the brutality of twenty-one. In the distance, Taylor Swift’s “Nothin’ New” plays, her siren echoes, projecting lyrics singing, “But will you still want me when I’m nothin' new?” 

Twenty-one, who bleeds potential onto a page, a canvas, a soft linen fabric bought on a shimmering Greek island. Dotting ink in the form of music notes and blinding me behind blue-light glasses. Twenty-one suffocates newly minted college graduates, forcing them into the office, robbing them of the time creaking past them in the hallway until they’re completely and irrevocably unmoored from the ambitions, hopes, dreams, and desires that used to keep them up at night and wake them up in a fit in the morning. Twenty-one, and its amounting elephant grave-yard, asks me to sell out, settle, and atrophy my starving wrists until I can’t so much as lift a pen, let alone string a sentence. 

To my dismay, I’m getting older. I see it in the way my younger sister looks at me and in the way I want to support the people I care about most in a way I was never supported but wish I had been. My age is tattooed between the lines of fierce loyalties. It’s jarring in the sense that I know so much more about life and love and loss than I did even a year ago. I see my empathy tenfolding across miles and months and methods of distraction. I’m getting older, the pieces of myself cutting themselves on diamonds, making me a glimmering demonstration of damaged goods. 

Despite getting older, there’s a lot I don’t know, things I can’t imagine I’ll ever have enough wisdom to scratch the surface of. I don’t know how much longer I’ll be considered young. I don’t know how long it will take for the world I’ve built around myself to come crumbling down; all those around me finally lose interest, the novelty of me having long worn off. I don’t know how much longer I’ll be viewed as beautiful, time threatening to break what’s not yet broken. I don’t know if I’ve ever been shiny. I don’t know if I’m truly the ingénue, innocent and wide-eyed. I don’t know if I’m talented, if I’ve got anything worth saying, or if the words I write are valuable to anyone but myself. 

But, because I’m twenty-one, and I’ve spent years of my life unbeknownst to how I can sidestep slow-treading innocence and abetting it from turning into performative naivety, there are a number of things I’ve come to learn.

I know I’m hardworking, and no one wants it more than I do. I knew I was never really going to grow up to be a singer, and my twelve-year-old self had a certain level of sense about her. I know I was a talented lacrosse player, and the fifteen, seventeen, and eighteen-year-old version of me merely wanted to be seen, appreciated, and loved. I know I can write another book if this one falters, and another one after that, and ten more if I must. I know there’s a strength in leaving something, or someone, that isn’t serving me anymore. I know growing older brings further opportunities to magnify wisdom, talent, and ambition. 

I know that on either side of the coin, I’ll look back and feel empathic for the girl who was just twenty-one, who just wanted to be heard and valued. 

I know the lingering, taunting voice of twenty-one exists only in abstract. 

If all young artists are all either staring at the sun or reaching for the stars, this is my declaration, my manifesto of the universe in my pockets.