writing in liminal space
I explain why we're here.
Hello Substack.
I’m not sure how to start writing without addressing the fact that I have started writing, so I’m allowing myself this one cringe paragraph: my name is Gillian. I am 27 years old, work full time as a figure skating coach and choreographer, and am going back to school as an education major. I live in New Hampshire, am married, and have a dog and a cat. I’ve kept a blog for 12 years, though my frequency of posting has always ebbed and flowed. I journal most days. I love a personal essay. Writing has always been the first thing I turn to to process. Call it self indulgent, call it the chronically online millennial in me, but I have a very deep urge to record, capture, catalog, and present to others what I’m thinking, how I’m living.
The thing is I feel like I’m on a precipice. These first seven years of my 20’s have felt chaotic. As nature intended, I tried a lot of different jobs, held down multiple jobs at once, fell in love, was haunted by a constant sense of drowning and feeling slightly out of place, and felt anxiety that would have been crippling if I was not so scared of stopping. A pandemic managed to make time move faster and slower—like I was both too late and too early for everything adults are supposed to do. But now it’s 2024, and I’m 27, and something has decidedly shifted. Life feels…stable? Possible? Like my feet found a sandbar right when I was getting worried I couldn’t keep myself afloat much longer. This moment in time for me feels like taking a big breath—I can see how everything could come crashing in again, but for now, there’s enough space for me to look around.
My middle school lit readings never clarified just how many coming of age stories each person gets. There is no one epic quest—instead we figure out one challenge, find a rhythm, gain some footing, take a breath—and then do it all over again. In what is probably the last year that could be described as my mid-20’s, it feels embarrassing to admit that it feels like I’ve accomplished all my dreams. Don’t get me wrong—there is still so much I want to do, but the big pieces—the parts that felt the most important, the most life and character defining when I cam up with them at 18—have either happened or been replaced. How sweet and hilarious that my detailed notebooks of dreams and goals, the fevered “what will I do with my one wild and precious life,” didn’t even last me out of my 20’s.
I feel the anticipatory awkwardness of cracking open a brand new notebook—not wanting to mess up the pages, even while knowing I will. It’s freeing to feel like I’ve landed in a place where I get to come up with new dreams. I’m not so naive as to think I truly know myself now, but I do know myself better than at 17. My new dreams fit my life, are molded for the person I want to be; and not the other way around. Perhaps most exciting, though, is the dreams I don’t have. The fact that for the first time in my entire life, I feel like I can wait and see what unfolds without it having to be bold proclamation ahead of time. I like that I feel less frantic.
I am entering a liminal space. I love being young and childless and married. I love that I feel some power over my work. I love the mornings when I get up, make coffee, and read on the couch. I love that the new dreams I have feel more grounded, more realistic, but just as exciting. Like they are meant for me, and not some hypothetical It Girl version of me. I’m excited to do new things. I want to burn my life down a bit—but in a slow, controlled way, like a bonfire or a big column candle getting a little out of hand. I just want to keep going and trying new things.
Which is why I’m writing—I’ve been craving a place to write again. But per the chronically online millennial of it all, I also want to record this time period of life, this moment when neither the 22 year-olds or 32 year-olds will claim you. I want to be paying attention while I’m figuring out what adult life will actually look like for me. I don’t want to miss, so I want to write it down.
What’s cheering me up right now:
Beach days. Especially when the water is magically warm enough to actually get in (a New England rarity). This summer we went up to Maine with family for the 4th of July, camped on Cape Cod last weekend, and this weekend I went to a local beach with a friend. Just the best.
Going out to buy fun food for a fun day. Per yesterdays beach day: I left our apartment, went to a local coffee shop to get an Iced Fog, then when to a local farm store and bought a sandwich, a fun drink, and some chips and dip to bring to the beach. A summer weekend day when I can splurge and just buy the fun stuff is the best.
Summer reading: Recent loves include: Good Material by Dolly Alderton, I’m Mostly Here to Enjoy Myself by Glynnis MacNicol, The Measure by Nikki Erlick.