That Moment When You Realize You’re Stuck Being You for the Rest of Your Life

I was sitting across from this blonde girl on the subway. Her haircut was all split ends and sharp and she held a viola case at her side and it occurred to me, for the first time, that I was stuck being myself for the rest of my life.

Like, it just hit me that I would never be this blonde girl on the train toting an instrument. People I will also never be: someone who can pull off dark lipstick; someone whose bangs make sense; someone who can remember what she read in a book just a week ago; someone who wears nightgowns to bed and wakes up early to cook scrambled eggs; someone who sits at a desk and handwrites thank you notes, fondly stroking her own penmanship in a moment of self-reflection and gratitude; someone who handwrites, period.

I have a sister who’s sixteen years my senior, which made her sort of unreal to me. Growing up, I would observe her life and make up stories about what my own would look like eventually. I pictured myself dating a tall, be-sweatered and brown-haired man who wore glasses and read books. We would live in the Columbia University dorms that I thought were regular apartments back then, and we would listen to records and burn incense and hang tapestries and own cats. I had seen my sister do these things—or maybe it was a character from A Different World—and I…