23

This morning I woke up and was somehow the big age of 23. I watched the sunrise from my balcony, all pretty and pink over the river. 

23 years old and I can no longer sing along to ‘Nothing New’ by Taylor Swift and Phoebe Bridgers and be the correct age. 23 and I feel like my chances of being the youngest person to ever do anything in particular is getting smaller by the minute. 23 and I’m older than Olivia Rodrigo and Jenna Ortega and Greta Thunberg and so many other very famous, very successful people. 

As a kid, I always wanted to be a prodigy. I would google “youngest authors in the world” and “how old is Billie Eilish” hoping that I could somehow beat them. In many ways, women are treated like they have an expiry date, and in the arts I think this is pretty evident. I wished for people to say things like “she’s so talented and she’s only *insert youthful age here*, but at 23 my achievements and skills are starting to feel expected, rather than marvelled at.

If you’re older than me and reading this, you probably want to scream at me and tell me that I’m still a baby. It’s true, I'm still young, but there’s a lot that I want to get done in my youth and birthdays just remind me that the clock is always on. 

I think that’s the downfall of being such a passionate person- one lifetime doesn’t always feel like enough. I want to write books and illustrate them and release albums and perform and read and learn and paint and exhibit and run and dance and travel and love but it’s a lot to squish into one little girl’s life. It’s the whole fig tree dilemma. I listen to Vienna by Billy Joel and feel a bit better (just like every other 20-something-year-old girl).

I know my life will be big and bright. The sparks of the past 23 years will grow into flames. The seeds will grow into flowers. I look to my idols. Dolly Alderton is 36. Alexa Chung is 40. Greta Gerwig is 41. Margaret Atwood is 84. Jane Goodall is 90. And I am 23.

We are magic at every age.