Larissa

(Alternatively titled: An early retrospective of my 20s)

This was me when I was 22 or so…

I remember someone telling me when I was quite young that she started really enjoying her life when she reached 30. My 10-year-old self couldn’t fathom this. 30-year-olds were married with 3 children, like my own mother was at the time. But when I reflect on just some of the things that have happened in my 20s, as I approach the winter of my youth, I’m beginning to understand.

In the last 9 years of my 20s, I have:

- taken out 9 body piercings
- gained 20 pounds (ie beat anorexia entirely)
- Got a second tattoo so I never forget how fucked up anorexia is
- stopped wearing so much goddamned makeup
- chopped off nearly 2 feet of hair
- went from black to platinum blond; settled on my natural colour
- grew back about 7 inches of hair
- got 2 university degrees
- naively took on an obscene amount of student loan debt
- emigrated and gained settled status in the UK (got married too, obvs)
- built a small but marvellous friend base from scratch in a city that many consider isolating
- embraced being an American/realised my patriotism in another country
- started drinking and loving proper beer
- understood that feminism isn’t about activism – it’s merely a way of life
- got a UK driver’s licence (fucking hard)
- advanced to practicing the full ashtanga primary series
- lost my yoga practice due to injury, and have worked every day since to get it back
- started eating meat again
- become a hardened, all-weather London cyclist
- realised high heels are ridiculous, and stopped wearing them generally
- embraced the size of my bum
- trained myself to do pull ups
- stopped trying to impress people
- become content with who I am

I’m ready for 29, and my 30s beyond it – come what may.

It’s been five months since I’ve seen my sister.

And also my dad and step mom.

But for my birthday, I’m heading off to Orlando to spend lots of time doing this:

And maybe some of this:

Dear website editor,

I am the unfortunate owner of the old telephone number for Ye Olde Pub, which has switched ownership and is now Cool New Pub. Its business listing has been updated on your website to reflect the new business name; however, its telephone number has not.

While getting calls from people on a Saturday morning asking if I’ve found miscellaneous personal effects that they’d left behind the night before is amusing, the constant telephone calls I get for the pub otherwise and people arguing with me that they got the telephone number from the internet so it MUST BE RIGHT are not.

Might you update the business listing?

Cheers,

Larissa

Dad: Oh, let me take your picture together. One, two, three *click*.

Danica: That one wasn’t very good, Dad. Let’s take it again.

Dad: Oh, okay. Ready, One, two, three *click*.

Me: The way I see it, our shower has two temperatures: ‘hotter than the face of the sun’ and ‘absolute zero’.

Him: Funny, I don’t have a problem with it.

Me: Good for you. You’ll have to show me some time…

Him: I’ve told you I’d show you any time.

Me: OK, so we’ll take a shower together and—

Him: Together? No way.

Disclaimer: Background information has been omitted because it’s funnier that way.

Take pictures of me like one of your French girls.

I mean, seriously. Fuck Rush Limbaugh. What kind of degenerate person likes this dude?

Folks, I have to laugh when I hear the president talk about his “moral example.”  The president’s moral example.  The president’s moral example is making you and me provide contraception for women who want unlimited, anytime, no-consequences sex.  Some morality.

Yes, because women who need low-cost contraception are all filthy whores. Not, you know, responsible members of society who aren’t keen on bringing children into the world when they – oh, I don’t know – can’t afford it. Just like they can’t afford the prohibitive cost of unsubsidised birth control.

Oh, but wait. Sex is solely for the making of the babies and the pleasing of the married menfolk who want for nothing more themselves than all the babies. Therefore, birth control is useless, you dirty slag.

How silly of me.

Colleagues who ‘borrow’ my milk out of the refrigerator are slowly turning me into a misanthrope.

A misanthrope probably wouldn’t hesitate to buy a fresh bottle of milk for the sole purpose of lacing it with dissolved laxatives and placing it in the work refrigerator.