My birthday always lands on the week of Thanksgiving, meaning that my annual case of the birthday blues is only magnified by the sense of nostalgia, melancholy and malaise that the holiday season inspires. A common experience, birthday blues refer to feelings of sadness and pensive reflection that can recur on a day riddled with ridiculously high expectations.
This year, I feel particularly sentimental because I’m turning 21 years old. It is arguably the most significant coming-of-age milestone in U.S. society — and with it come all the expectations and liberations associated with true adulthood, like carving out an independent identity and waltzing into Havana Club Atlanta for the first time without the fear of dismissal. While the occasion should be a cause to celebrate, anticipating the clock striking midnight seems more like mourning a chapter of my life that I will never get back. Birthdays, like holidays, change drastically in college, transforming from blissfully joyous occasions to bittersweet reminders of life’s entropy and ephemerality. This year, however, I am hoping to reframe the birthday blues, pushing back against the pressure to have the perfect celebration and embracing the overwhelming uncertainty of being a twenty-something.
Time flies in your 20s — or so I’ve been told. Time dilation refers to the concept that one’s perception of time depends upon how fast they are going. At Emory University, each day is a whirlwind. My weeks are measured in editors’ meetings in The Emory Wheel’s offices, hours spent in the Matheson Reading Room and shuttle rides from the University’s Clairmont Campus to Woodruff Circle. Yet, as the semester comes to a close and students flock to their hometowns for a few precious weeks during the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays, time slows to an entirely different pace. When I make the hour-long drive home, I trade narrow Midtown Atlanta roads for sprawling suburban streets, driving past places I know like the back of my hand. My childhood bedroom becomes a liminal space frozen at some point during my senior year of high school, and every grocery store encounter with an acquaintance sounds like the outro of Phoebe Bridgers’ “Scott Street.”
It is tempting to forget that while I have been away at Emory, familiar faces have led different lives too — a realization that hits harder because of the many memories birthdays bring up. The truth is, you can ask someone to not become a stranger, but trajectories often change, and a sense of loss is inextricably tied to self-growth. Returning home will never lose its charm, but at 21, subtle notes of dissonance — like the wistful whistle of a moving train — suddenly emerge.
Being a third-year student also means occupying a complex place in the academic system: I am straddling all the opportunities that Emory offers while looking ahead toward the vast sea of postgraduate life. The anticipation of securing a stable career can be overwhelming — and not just for me. According to a Harvard University (Mass.) Graduate School of Education survey, the United States currently faces a crisis in which young adults, specifically individuals from ages 18 to 25, are more depressed, anxious and lonely than any other age group in the country. Still, as students, we are fed a pervasive narrative about making the most of our ever-fleeting prime, laden with the pressure to achieve academic, social and career success before time is up. With three semesters left at Emory, I feel like my dream life — one with an enchanting city, a sexy writing profession and an equally attractive partner — is simultaneously within arm’s reach and hopelessly unattainable. Anything is possible, which means that anything can go wrong and my meticulously crafted hopes and dreams have the capability of crumbling at any moment. Worse, gone are the starry-eyed days of getting lost on Eagle Row or sampling the Kaldi’s Coffee menu for the first time. I can't say that I miss the confines of dorm life or the bouts of homesickness that define freshman year, but I do miss gliding through college without constantly charting my next move.
As a creative writing major, it is no surprise that I would turn to literature for comfort. In “The White Album,” Joan Didion reflects on the chaos of the ’60s, recounting the period as tumultuous, confusing and uncontrollable — a description that seems just as apt when applied to one’s 20s. In a chapter titled “Bureaucrats,” Didion describes driving down the Santa Monica Freeway, positing that the moments between merging and exiting require “a distortion of time.” I have not been to Santa Monica since I was 14 and avoid freeways at all costs, but still, I feel Didion’s description in my own life, resonating with the metaphor of the open road as a symbol of what my 20s could contain. You cannot control the weather, the traffic or the natural progression of time. Still, you can control the directions in which you turn and the way you react to speed bumps or setbacks, finding structure in unnavigated territory nonetheless.
For me, the birthday blues are more intense than a case of wistful reflection this year. They are a reminder of the problematic ways in which society packages adulthood. Turning 21 is a milestone, but the fanfare should not overshadow the fact that growing up is a continual process that simply cannot be reduced to a magic number — not 16, 18 or 21. I do not know what my life will look like 10 years from now, and I probably do not know what my life will look like one week from now, either. Although 21 is far too young to have it all figured out, mercurial transitions are exactly what make each day so exciting. Every decision that I make from here on out belongs entirely to me. That is not frightening anymore: It’s empowering.
When I think about time dilation and the sheer vastness and possibility that this universe holds, I almost always come back to Christopher Nolan’s “Interstellar” (2014). In the film, 10-year-old Murphy Cooper interrogates her father about Murphy’s Law, concerned that anything that can go wrong will go wrong. Her father counters that Murphy’s Law does not inherently posit something bad will happen: It just means that anything that can happen will happen. The father’s interpretation is the kind of philosophy I hope to carry with me, both into this holiday season and into the decade that lies ahead. No matter how volatile things may appear, at 21, anything that can happen will happen, and that’s somehow magical.
Whether it is on a shooting star or a flickering candle, call this perspective shift my birthday wish and my personal protest against the birthday blues. Nostalgia during sentimental occasions is a powerful emotion, but powerful too is the promise that endless opportunities await.
Contact Safa Wahidi at safa.wahidi@emory.edu.
