Saraid de Silva is a Sri Lankan Pākehā writer and creative based in Tāmaki. She works across the mediums of radio, theatre and television,  is the co-founder of the podcast Conversations with My Immigrant Parents. She has written for Ensemble about grief, the emotions of the pandemic and the Queen's death.

Youth

I’ve been told so many lies about growing older. Lies about what I should try to hold onto, who and what I should prioritise.

I’m sure I’m not the only one who thought that being 14 would be like a Mary-Kate and Ashley film. Full of flirty adventures and platform sandals. In reality, it felt more like a daytime infomercial, but lonelier. I looked forward to my 20s instead. 

You can be many different people over the course of a whole decade (I was). I did get flirtation and adventure in my last one. But I was also broke, as hell, and I didn’t know how to move through the world as myself.

Looking back now, I realise I was waiting for both of these life stages to peak according to my romantic partners, that finding a lasting one was the primary objective, the thing I imagined all the adventures would drive me closer to. I had good times with some lovely people.

But because that was the main thing I was surreptitiously encouraged to strive for, I’m frequently surprised by how much happier so many other things have made me. Independence, spending time with friends, artistic satisfaction – having an idea for something and seeing it through right to the end. I don’t need a partner to solidify me in my own life. I’ve only just worked that out.

May be wasted on

I’m constantly fascinated by it – why we keep telling ourselves and those younger than us what times in their lives will be the most fun. We don’t know what another person’s fun looks like. Fun for me? Watching my friends turn 30. 

Most of them are women I have known since my teenage years or early 20s. They are happy now. In a rooted, sustainable way. They have jobs they are good at, or places they love to live in, or plans they’re excited to make, or children they adore. When they look in the mirror the person they’ve spent years trying to be is often looking back.

One of my queer friends is discovering a femininity she didn’t previously feel safe in. One of my straight white friends (omg yes I have them) describes herself as being unambitious. She wants to tend to the growth of those around her, rather than reach for the sky herself. Another friend is going on ADHD medication, she can’t wait to feel at home in her own head.

And when they turned 30 I got to sit with all the other people who loved them, watch them take stock of the lives they’ve created, and feel proud of themselves for doing it.

Youth was sold to me as something brief, holy and unmatchable. But now that I’m a little removed, I’m discovering how much more accessible happiness is when it’s not contingent on my girlhood. I love to watch myself and my friends getting older. I cherish it because not all of us have made it here. 

The young but

Without really wanting to, I absorbed the idea there were two or three paths towards happiness and that all of them involved being young and pretty. Prettiness I heard a lot about. It would arrive in my teenage years, peak soon after, and from then on it would be a devastating, downhill journey into grotesque obscurity.

No one told me about the joy of looking like myself. I keep coming back to this because so much of the happiness I was promised was tethered to the expectation of my own beauty. It still is, I would be the worst kind of liar if I didn’t admit that having skin I can now afford to take care of didn’t contribute to my sense of self. Or that getting adult braces wasn’t life-changing. 

But I maintain that the real thrill is not in attaining some ideal of beauty, but in having my outside look closer to how I feel on the inside. When I was younger I couldn’t afford the enormous platform boots that make me feel safe. I didn’t know that tattooing my body would help me feel in control of it. I hadn’t found the right balance of queerness in my presentation.

Younger me hadn’t reckoned with herself or her mortality through losing people she loved. She didn’t know what she was good at. She hadn’t had her heart broken. Those are the things that have taught me about myself. They are the experiences I wear, like my clothes, every day. 

It’s not wasted on me

I don’t think that turning 30 is the start or the end of anything. It is still so young.

But the way that my friends' faces looked in dark restaurants, illuminated by candles and the flashes of phone cameras as we swung them into the next decade of their lives, is something I hold close.

It’s the joy of this moment I keep returning to. Like realising the life we were looking forward to is happening. And there’s more of it coming. I got told to appreciate my youth so many times, now I see everything I wanted out of it is still ahead of me.