on change

if memory serves me right, the last time i started an online journal (read: tumblr), it was on a birthday—sometime in my 20s, what now feels like lifetimes ago. so it only seems fitting to start this one on another birthday, this time in my 30s, marking another lap around the sun.

birthdays have always felt like an opportunity to pause, take stock, and reflect on what’s happened over the last 360-something days.

and as i look back today, i finally understand the truth of the hackneyed but oddly persistent adage: the only constant in life is change. time and time again, i’ve heard this—offered as motivation, a kind of reassurance, a warning, even.

change has been, is, and will always be inevitable: relationships, bodies, careers, homes, emotions, ad infinitum. but for the vast majority of my life, i resisted change at every turn, convinced it was an existential threat, a tide i might somehow be able to outswim. i clung to old routines, familiar faces, the rhythms of sameness; i, of course, was the last of my friend group to give up on the blackberry. and when things inevitably changed, as they always do, i dove headfirst into nostalgia, mourning the past, replaying what once was, tracing outlines of fading memories.

eventually, though, i adjusted. the perpetual onslaught of change—dare i say—changed me. friends moved, family members passed, exes got married, people had children. i, too, changed: jobs 26 times, addresses 42 times, fell in love, fell out of love, and did it all over again. i started liking olives.

these days, change no longer startles me the way it used to—it barely even registers. i expect it, brace for it, assume it. but i wonder: is that emotional maturity? or numbness disguised as wisdom? have i simply inculcated myself to avoid attachment as a form of self-preservation?

i’m not sure.

is it healthy that i refuse to invest in furniture because i know it’ll eventually belong to some craigslist stranger who promises a venmo that never comes? does it make sense to make conversation with my barista, knowing she’ll probably quit next week after booking a guest star on ncis: idaho falls? is it worth getting attached to my favorite neighborhood bookstore, knowing it might be replaced in a year’s time by a place called still, we juice?

i don’t know.

maybe there’s a way to hold things lightly without letting them slip through my fingers completely. to accept that while change is inevitable, it doesn’t make the present moment any less worth investing in, savoring in, loving in.

and maybe, for now, that’s enough.