This year is a notable birthday, with a lot of anniversaries, all depending on which point in the past you measure. For example:

~ Twenty years ago, I returned to the US, after living as a registered alien and working for a foreign government. I also started practicing yoga—meditation, asana practice, chanting.

~ Thirty years ago, I started teaching, and have continued in some capacity, with barely any interruption.

~ When I was half my current age, a few months out of college, I moved overseas to start working for that foreign government (as a teacher, not some espionage operative).

Half my life ago, my life was fully my own, for the first time.

As a child, my life never felt like mine. I grew up under a lot of expectations and projections, as children often do. Not to mention the absurd, exhausting lengths I went to mimic what I was sure were lovable, normal people—that if I JUST DIDN’T GIVE UP, I’d crack the code that stopped the bullying.

I felt that most people, especially adults, were lying nearly all the time. I saw nothing that I wanted for my own future. The only examples were lives I didn’t want.

So I trusted the Universe; I trusted the Unknown. Nothing else was reliable.

College was a liminal time. For the first time, I was living and doing what I wanted. (For which I’m grateful, because that experience is not for everyone and far too many people are pressured into it.)

And yet, I was there with a lot those expectations. That life wasn’t fully mine; I was still fulfilling other people’s ideas for me. I was still flailing at my desperate impersonation of normal and lovable.

Finally: graduation. The following year, half my life ago, the calendar started to feel strange. I realized it was because I’d never, never thought concretely about the time after my college graduation. I’d focused on reaching that milestone, and never spared any energy to wonder further.

That realization gave me the final nudge I needed to claim my life as mine. I’d been so focused on refining inevitable failures of following the flow chart that I’d never given real thought to actual reality.

So – no more manic desperation, no more flailing mimicry.

I decided to claiming mySelf. My agency, my wisdom, my autonomy, my intuition.

Now, half my life later, I’m living through the time of my childhood and teenage years becoming vintage. The music has joined the genres of classic, old school. The clothes are super hip.

I wanted a photo as an homage to that era, so I grabbed the only remaining high school apparel I have:

~ A plaid flannel that was vintage when I bought it in a thrift shop.

~ Dr Martens that have walked down sidewalks, train tracks, the snow at a US Presidential inauguration, and ruins-that-were-previously-hard-t0-find-and-sketchy-in-the-woods-but-now-the-Instagrammable-centerpiece-of-a-very-hip-public-park.

(Mind you, I still wear these things. Just less often than when they were on heavy rotation—weekly and daily, respectively—in my unofficial school uniform. I purchased both with the money I saved from my first legal job, for which I applied the day I was old enough to work. Plus funds from baby-sitting gigs.)

That flannel is so old that there’s nothing flannel-y or warm about it anymore. It’s opaque in the photo, but if you hold it up to light it’s as translucent as cheesecloth. And so soft that I can’t bear to give it away.

Those boots’ve had a few shoelace replacements, but otherwise have held up.

My partner calls those boots the “grade niners” — because that’s when I got them (and the flannel).

Upon seeing the photo, I finally thought beyond the vintage items from three decades ago. About grade niner me.

Grade niner me never would’ve believed any accurate predictions of her future. If you had told her anything true—that she’d end up working for a foreign government, or managing festivals, or doing performance art—she would’ve rolled her eyes and told you to go fuck yourself.

Like I typed, grade niner me believed adults were usually lying. Not only did she have zero patience for that nonsense, she had no qualms in telling you.

But honestly, even if I time traveled, with the same information, to tell grade niner me, I would have gotten the same reaction.

(Nothing personal.)

Grade niner me would never’ve believed any accurate prediction of her future—that her life would become more magical, terrible, sublime, and numinous that she could fathom.

So, I’m glad she went out and claimed herSelf.