“You can dance. You can jive. Having the time of your life. Ooooooh see that girl. Watch that scene, Digging the Dancing Queen!!! 🎶…
You are the dancing queen, Young and sweet, only seventeen…” — Dancing Queen, ABBA
Today is my 17th birthday.
I feel I become a snake every year – shedding a more naïve version of myself to become something more than who I am.
And every year, I forget what it was like to be younger – like how pain turns to a shadow once the accident is done – or how you only remember the skeleton of a song you’ve only heard once. Each year, my past self turns to a silhouette – my several shadows tumbling and touching each other as I run, all of them converging but morphed – present but intangible.
It’s a strange, subconscious estrangement of my former self – almost an attempt to assert my maturity by invalidating the opinions of a younger me – a yearning to break free from the flesh and skin of the past. It’s the wild teenage desire to become independent as your body transforms into something that you no longer recognise.
17 is such a strange age. It’s like having one leg stuck in childhood and the other skimming the line of adulthood – like “floating in mid-air” (I quote my friend, M). It's a mirage – you’re there but not there yet – old but not old enough.
It’s also the year of ABBA’s “Dancing Queen” and Olivia Rodrigo’s “Brutal” – the age Harry Potter defeated Voldemort (sorry, but… what?!) – the middle of the end of a weird, romanticized and confused era of our life – and yet, I feel none of the adventure, the heavy burden of the hero, the euphoria of this “primed” youth (though sometimes I do, at it’s fullest), the disastrous teenage angst and the urge to burn down the world. Maybe I used to, but now, I don’t.
Instead, I feel like a pebble lodged at the river bank amongst larger rocks – protected and safe — until the river’s current comes crashing down. Then, I will be thrust into the world away from my little home – into the hands of the future. Like the current – life is inevitable. Like the pebble – I am insignificant.
17 feels silvery and dreamlike – yet still heavy with its weight, with pressure – to grow, to mature, to become independent, to learn, to explore and yet to perform, excel, achieve. It feels far too real, far too important, fleshy against the tongue. It feels stripped from any of the romanticized bliss of the age: last year, I was on a school trip in Shivpuri on my birthday; this year, I am studying for an Economics test.
And with time — with change, I can’t help but think about memory…
And the way the past and future merge if you think about the present for too long. The way memory shifts every time we touch it, how it distorts, morphs, changes — and yet still, we believe in its validity.
If we are our memories and our memories are fraudulent, ever-changing, unreliable – then who are we?
What is the point of memory if it is so faulty, scratchy, silvery, slippery – if all we do is stumble over fragments that our present self twists with interpretation, and yet still believe it is true? Scientists say we remember so we can dream, hope, imagine: that when we think of the past and the future, the same parts of our brain light up.1
Other researchers found that our future self is a stranger to our present self – and that to work, to save, to scavenge for that person and their needs is like doing it for someone we meet on a bus – it feels dissociated, dispassionate, difficult.2
What is the point of memory if all it serves is for us to think about a future in which we are a stranger to ourselves – or recreate a past that we inevitably and unconsciously estrange ourselves from simply by touching? What is this vehicle that converges and intermingles without cease – without reason or rhyme?
*
On November 13th 1949, Sylvia Plath wrote in her diary 3 :
As of today, I have decided to keep a diary again. Just a place where I can write my thoughts and opinions when I have a moment. Somehow, I have to keep and hold the rapture of being 17. Every day is so precious. I feel infinitely sad at the thought of all this time melting further and further away from me as I grow older.
Maybe that is what I fear – time melting away – and how the person I am right now will become faded, forgotten and elusive to my future self. Maybe I am scared my past is becoming melted time – a cloud of things that matter but slowly becoming something inaccessible – already it feels like it is slipping, blurring as I try to clench onto it, the years merging into each other.
What am I doing here – with my words – in this enormous world that may swallow me to insignificance, in this world where I may be the star no one would ever remember when it fades?
Sometimes, the words fail me – or I fail the words: I want to blame language for my incapability, for my helplessness in the expanse of the universe – at least then, I can feel I have control.
It’s all so much. Growing up, growing older, going away from home – independence – the bird out of the cage… but is home really a cage? What if I realize I don’t know how to fly and instead go plummeting down to the ground? What if I manage to flutter for a little while, a feat of mere luck, before I realize I never had wings to begin with?
And yet, I can’t help but feel so tremendously excited about the future: about all the things I am yet to learn and places to explore; all the things I am yet to read and write and think about; all the people I am to meet, the moments to be experienced, the memories to be made!
I want to scream loudly, like I want to on every birthday: I am a big girl now! Look – I’m older and wiser and smarter! Look, Mom, look, Papa, I’m growing up!
Next year I will be 18. Next year, I can get a bank account and my UPI system verified, and a new passport and a driver’s license!
This year, all I want to do is feel the life inside of me thrive. I want to fill my head with great books, fill my days with writing, think and think freely, and love. Love — and feel the joy and thrill of living, living in the moment, being with friends and the endless possibility ahead. It is going to be a difficult year for me, one heavy with expectation, a culmination of the past few years, but I won’t let that get in the way of a wonderful year — a year in which I learn and learn, and breathe in the air and appreciate life for what it is.
I’ve never cried on my birthday – perhaps I am not old enough to stop feeling the childish euphoria of growing up, perhaps I never will be.
I’ve also never gifted myself anything (it’s because I have no money of my own – I ask my parents to buy me the books I want 🥲).
But this year my gift to myself is a big big hug – one of those large, warm Baymax or Winnie-the-Pooh kind of hugs – and I want to whisper in my ear:
You will be alright.
You are enough.
And also, you're a Dancing Queen now! How wonderful is that!
Want to give me a birthday gift?
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Also, a note, thank you for all your kind words and comments from my last post. I am so infinitely grateful for your support and love — it motivates me to keep writing and pushes me on days of self-doubt. I almost felt like crying with all the lovely things you had said about it.
Posts that inspired this writing:
Corporate America Malaise — by Clara from
On turning 20 — by
from23 things to remember at 23 — by
from
Memory, Explained — part of the Vox Explained series on Netflix (also on YouTube). A great video to understand memory — its brilliance and its fragility.
Can We Keep Time? — part of the Atlantis’s “How to…” podcast. A great listen about memory, social media and time.
You possess an amazing skill of converting your thoughts into a great narration, like a gift of the gab! Best wishes on your birthday and many more happy returns of the day and many more articulations. God bless you.
Loved every word and thoughts .. god bless you.