28 to be

By Amanda Marques

Illustration by Daisy Allen

you’ll never be as free as you are in your twenties unless you are a woman

you’ll be terrified of growing older then obsessed at looking in the mirror and asking yourself when did your smooth forehead start to look like a dry valley

you’ll count calories for every meal and go to the gym and run run run on the treadmill and count some more calories while the lads shove their greasy hands inside a spice bag and chew on chicken and fries and onions and peppers

you’ll part your beautiful hair and braid it with so much love you’ll put ribbons at the tips and men will whistle at you when you leave the house and you will feel dirty, wrong

you’ll try ten different pairs of trousers and none of them will pass your thighs and you will scream silently in the changing room while the sales associate in brown thomas tells you no dear we don’t have bigger sizes

you’ll never be as free as you are in your twenties unless you are queer

you’ll hold your girlfriend’s hand and you’ll make her smile but you’ll always take a look around to make sure this coffee shop is safe and they won’t scream slurs at you like they did on the bus that day you were going to the beach together

you’ll beg your friends to text you when they get home after the pub you know just in case you’ll hear your parents say they wish you were different and they didn’t have this back in the day and they will tell you to be a little less

you’ll cry sometimes you wish you were a little less too

you’ll never be as free as you are in your twenties unless you are an immigrant

you’ll be anxious at immigration when it’s time to come back from vacation why are ye here where is yer visa where do ya live no no i want the eircode gimme yer passport

you’ll hear they praise your english oh why thank you i am a writer i did a masters degree in creative writing yes my accent is a little funny no i am not from são paulo

you’ll scroll through instagram and look they took another bike from a deliveroo driver but that’s ok at least they didn’t hurt this one right

you’ll watch o’connell burn and know there’s people not a lot of people but there are some of them who will look at you with hatred in their eyes and wish you were burning with it

nevermind because you’ll never be as free as you are in your twenties when the world is ending