I turn twenty-one in Budapest. My family is here, visiting me, and we go out to dinner. It is August and warm and my birthday. I wear a new dress and I order a drink. No one IDs me. I’m twenty-one, and I keep on asserting that it’s not that exciting.
There’s a story my family always recounts on my birthday, one about the day I turned eleven. My whole extended family had gathered in the living room to celebrate. Night had fallen, the gift-giving was over. We’d all eaten cake, and I’d pretended to look shy as they sang the happy birthday song. Then I’d stood up tall on the armrest of the couch, announced I had a few words to say.
“This was the best birthday ever,” I’d said. Thank you for the presents. I’d paused. Waited a beat. “I just–” I’d continued. “I just cannot help but regret my fading youth.”
The crowd must have laughed at this punchline. I’m sure I gave an impish smile. Maybe I even bowed.
And so a decade goes by and I’m in my twenties and this is the youth which everyone talks about. In my communism class, the teacher asserts, “it can be a general feeling that you are happier in your twenties then, say, in your seventies.” She’s talking about nostalgia for communism among older Hungarians but all I can think about is yesterday, in the subway, when I looked at my reflection distorted by wavy plastic and saw an old woman looking back. I write down this teacher’s words, though I’m not entirely sure why.
I keep a daily journal. Dutifully, I mark down pages, calculating how much I have to write a day to fill every single page. I put my dreams there, my night sweats, my bowel movements. It was supposed to be a memory log or perhaps even the beginning of a My Novel. Mainly, though, I paste in old receipts I find crumpled in my pockets and pretend as if I’m writing something real.
It’s hard to write something cohesive about an era you’re still in, and no one cares about My Year Abroad. But I’ve been itching to write lately and not knowing how. It’s a feeling I’m not used to; this disconnect between language and thought, a lack of rhythm, words I force together instead of simply allowing to flow out.
It must stem from limbo; from four months of a life outside the context of Myself. No strings, no tangles but that also means no anchors, no tethers between the moment and the self.
I decide I want to write fiction again. I want to tell stories and make up characters. I’m bored of the personal essay, bored of myself. I ask my mom to send me the fiction prompts she gives her students. I read through half of one, open TikTok, try to go to bed.
Sylvie Pingeon is a junior at Wesleyan University, with work featured in Expat Press, both online and in print.
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