Great Expectations
thoughts on year 22
THE ABOVE CLIP IS AN A CAPELLA COVER OF TAYLOR SWIFT’S “22”. THAT SHRILL SONG RANG OUT OFTEN WHEN I WAS 16. MY REALITY COULD NOT BE MORE DIFFERENT THAN WHAT WAS ANTICIPATED WITHIN THAT STUPIDLY SIMPLE TIME
I abrasively found myself back in that childhood hometown just to watch two weeks of quarantine fly by. I also found my thoughts obsessing over the same thing, which was whatever I expected this year to be. Living in the present is difficult for me at times. I’m stupid, symbolic, and the number 22 has always hit me strongly. The hopes were all held insanely high. This specific trip around the sun has been major in ways that could not be expected.
The longer I mentally sprinted around and around my own circumstances, I grew curious about what others might be disappointed by, or surprised by. Some of us are lucky enough to be living through such a car crash of an experience. I’ve thought about age and how much of an emphasis our society places on it, as well the invisible timeline. There are ‘markers’ throughout this life like college graduation or, marriage. I’ve loved this quarantine in the way that it laughs at all of our structures and all of our timelines.
Year 22 took a sharp left turn and even though it stings, I’m more than grateful to be here. Please take a moment to digest the short/sweet submissions I received below. Your prime can be when you’re 50. You’re great when you decide to be
Aalon Smith
22
I dreamed about him and the ocean again last night. We danced. We laughed. We just...were. This year has showed me that life can be chaotically beautiful. Still hurts like a bitch though.
Aalon
The anticipations:
Realities:
Andie Dulsky
22
I don’t know much of myself. It’s something like returning to softness, radically accepting the pieces of myself I’d buried so deeply in the garden, all cool soil and salvia roots. I want everything to be soft around the edges. These things are so soft that they fade entirely; others hold fast to perceived truths so rigid that everything falls apart at the seams.
-Andie
The anticipations:
Realities:
DEgotelo
22
My twenty-second year was fast, very fast. I was frightened and scared to actually take that leap of faith and go in to freelancing full time. Although I had planned it when I started at Uniqlo 2 years prior, planning and doing are two different things. I thought of a sloth because I was prepared for it to gooo slooowww.
As I keep telling myself over and over, year after year, “It’s all in your head.” My 22nd year was fast because a lot of opportunities came my way and I took them without thinking. I took everything. Worked longer hours. It went nothing like I thought it would go. In the end, I try to tune out of my head as much as possible.
-Degotelo
The anticipations:
Realities:
Samantha Rivera
22
Little me always had a plan. A treasure map in fact; scribbled with a series of consecutive dashes and imperative stopping points marked “X” in red. Underneath the Xs’? Tapioca paper. Underneath the dashes? Tapioca paper. The map lead nowhere in specific. It complied to the girl’s spontaneity and independence taking the girl nowhere and everywhere all at once.
Current Reality:
I have been blindfolded, handed a stick and told to: GO! SWING! WATCH OUT! SWING! I’ve done all the above by the way. Although proud, I-I I’m just annoyed and bored and now I think I need to return to the line. Ya know, for the next kid’s sake. For the sake of keeping the game “fun”. Swing, hit, crack. Swing. Hit. Crack. We rotate like little tinker men on an assembly line and wow how did I get this exhausted? What’s the point of this game again? Swing, hit, boom. Oh yeah, the candy.
-Sam
The anticipations:
Realities:
Kaitlyn Gallemore
22
When I made the forced transition from CO to OK I decided that if I was going to move to a place, I did not want to be around people I knew. It would be different being away from my home, my friends, my hobbies, my nature - all while going through a heart wrenching break up. I wanted to create myself in my perfect image. I was going to create more as well as break unhealthy addictions/habits, but most importantly I decided I was finally going to be happy. Instead, this year has taken me down a path riddled with death, chaos, drama, aggression, conflict, pain, and utter weirdness. Darkness. I feel trapped. I feel depressed. I feel not at all like myself. But I really thought 22 would take me some place so different, some place stronger and beautiful....now I am just alone with everything I hate about myself and the memories of the me I loved and the memories of the people and places I love.
-Kaitlyn
The anticipations:
Realities:
Ivy Lindstrom
22
The first three pictures depicting what I thought 22 would be like are very loosely based on what my goals were; to finally move somewhere else (LA), go to new and exciting shows, and possibly even get further into the fashion world. These were my fantasies. 22 instead turned out to be a rollercoaster of traveling to a place I've always wanted to go since I was a child (Japan), to making new friendships with creatives and genuinely good people, and then finally becoming trapped in my home and going to online raves and being forced to face loneliness for the remaining months of being 22. 22 was a very magical and awful year, and I never thought I would make it to 22, I'm glad I did.
-Ivy
The anticipations:
Realities:
Ellie Gordon
22
I had limited expectations for my 22nd year, but I did not expect this. I was looking forward to plenty of travel opportunities with friends and family, five gallery shows I was to be a part of, and my graduation from college. Instead, I have felt quite lonely and largely uninspired due to the pandemic which has trapped me in my home and kept me from the people and places and activities that I adore. Thankfully, I have found solace in my art, finding ways to develop cyanotype photographs in my sink and ways to screen print in my garage.
-Elisabeth (Ellie) Gordon
The anticipations:
Realities:
India English
22
I've been having a lot of trouble describing the way I feel about everything going on, I think it's hard to describe something that changes daily and has no end in sight, especially considering I'm in my early twenties and was itching to get started on making a life for myself, until that quickly ended and I found myself back in my mom's house. This is not to say I haven't had some good moments and days in quarantine, many of my days have been spent getting lost in any reality (but my own) through some of my favorite films. I feel really lucky in so many ways, but no matter who you are this shit sucks, movies are a groovy way to get out of your head. The top three reels are before quarantine, and the last three are during.
-India
The Anticipations:
Realities:
Everything will be alright