Kicking the Bucket

When I was 17, in a fit of truly 17 year old angst about how I had lived such a sheltered life, I made a bucket list, a declaration that my life, in the future, would not continue to be this small.

In true 2011 fashion, the journal that I wrote down this list of the dreams, desires and wishes I held for my future self was hard-backed and Pepto Bismal pink with the words “keep calm and eat a cupcake” written on the cover in white. We were all always imploring each other to keep calm and do something else then. If only we knew the future. If only we realized, 2011 was a relatively stable time. We should have saved some of that calm for later.

The original list consisted of about 50 items such as “Date someone in a band” and “Have sex on the beach” and “fall in love” (two I have done, one I haven’t), typical 17-year-old goals. But it also featured earnest desires like “vote in a presidential election” and “go to Greece” and “graduate from college” (all of which, I am proud to say, I have done).

This journal lived forgotten on the bookshelf in my childhood bedroom for 5 years, gathering dust next to my copies of Eragon, Ella Enchanted andSisterhood of the Traveling Pants. Until that strange liminal space after I graduated from college and before I moved into true adulthood and my first apartment in New York. Then, between desperate bouts of trying to find a job and not fall into post-college despair, I discovered it and plucked it off the shelf.

Turning through the thin pages, I laughed at my high school innocence and marveled at how far I, at the ripe old age of 22, had come. I grabbed up the nearest pen and began crossing off things I had accomplished, dating them, as best I could remember, when the deed had been done.

When I finished, I began thinking about how I wanted the next 5 or so years of my life to go. What were my young adult dreams, desires and goals? What did I hope to accomplish in this next 5 years? What, when I rediscovered this journal in 5 or 10 years in some hidden corner, or plain sight, would I hope to be able to cross off? So I added more items until the list was near 180 long.

And then I put down my pen, closed the cover, tucked it on a shelf and forgot about it.

Recently, seven-ish years later, I was going through my bookshelf to par down my ever expanding book collection and stumbled upon this journal. As I have a horrible memory for anything not media related, I had forgotten all about this list. And yet some part of me had known the significance of this little pink notebook, carting it from apartment to apartment, crossing Central Park and borough lines.

I sat down on my bed and flipped through the pages, a smile on my lips. There were some items that were wildly outdated ( number 5- get a boyfriend is particularly irrelevant these days), some that were no longer possible due to ended friendships and changed circumstances. But there were many I was able to cross off, many desires fulfilled and dreams achieved.

The feeling of dragging that pen across the page was like cutting open a tunnel to the past and looking back to the girls I was at 17 and 22, saying to them, “Look who we’ve become. Are you proud of us?” and knowing, strangely, the answer might actually be yes.

I’m not sure what magic this list holds, how it finds me in moments of transition when I need to reflect on how far I’ve come, when I am feeling stuck, but somehow it does.

As I crossed off items this time, it was a bit bittersweet because many of the things I have done were the ambitions of the very young (like 36. Buy myself a drink at a bar, an act that once held such thrill, or 15. Live in an apartment).

Now, as I stare down the remaining 5 months of my 20’s, leaving the last real decade of youth, I find it hard to add new items to the list. Goals like owning property or having children seem even further from my grasp than when I was 17 (before I had lived through so many major world and economic and health events, back when my biggest concerns were not getting a 5 on an AP exam or whether my friends were hanging out without me).

How can I plan my life when so much of our world feels so uncertain, a castle built on shifting sand, and not hardy New England sand that is actually mostly rocks. Fine Caribbean sand, soft to the touch, barely holding together.

There are still many items left to cross off, though. Meet my sister’s children (or dogs). See my best friends married or settled in their lives. Hold the finished copy of a book I wrote in my hands. Take a roadtrip across the country. So many milestones I have yet to reach, goals to add I haven’t yet conceived of.

I wonder who I will be the next time I open the list, which numbers I will get to cross off then. I wonder what she will think of me.