In the Blink of an Eye

It’s really true, your 20s pass by in the blink of an eye. More likely than not, it’s the best decade of a person’s life no matter what their experiences are (I say this despite being someone who had a partially horrible 20s).

This morning I woke up having just dreamt of a UOP SASA (the Indian club during college) reunion. Because it was a private collage, the Indian community was relatively “small” so everyone knew each other regardless of what year they were. Every year we had two major parties – Diwali and an end of the year Banquet. Let me tell you – for a private college and a small community… we knew how to party hard and had a BLAST.

This dream threw me back 10-13 years and nostalgia kicked in. I’m not sure if having good memories is a good thing (because I know I lived those happy moments), or a bad thing (because my heart yearns for them). Anyhow, I promptly went to Facebook and revisited the UOP SASA page (which I hadn’t even thought of in years!). Lo and behold, scrolling back enough, all posts and photos were still there and a smile crept onto my almost tearing face.

College was such a good time, I’m not sure why I had spent so much of it so stressed out about life instead of just enjoying myself (more). I definitely took that time for granted because I didn’t know any better. The only worry I should have had was ensuring I got good grades (which I did… but so why did I bother caring about anything else?)

The rest of my 20s… minus the one big bad blotch that I figure we may as well conveniently forget, were also amazing. My life in San Diego – Natak practices and shows, friends all living a bachelor and pseudo bachelor life… hanging out every single day on a moment’s notice…

THOSE were the days.

Sometimes I squeeze my eyes shut and beg the universe to let me go back to 18 so that I can redo it all over again. But hey, hindsight is 20/20 and the cruel reality is that we can’t actually redo anything.

Is my life good now? Yes frankly it’s amazing… but that youthful and exciting sense of having the world’s choices in front of me doesn’t exist anymore and truthfully sometimes I yearn for it. Now it’s all work, grown up responsibilities, the stress of needing to buy a house we can’t afford in the ridiculously expensive Bay Area, the stress of having to have a baby because the bioclock is ticking even though mentally we still need one last hurrah (thanks/no thanks COVID for pushing that back another 2 years).

I’m still “young” but it’s starting… that feeling that my body is aging. We can’t physically time travel… but I guess the Universe did give us a substitute/alternate pseudo-method…

…our memories