Today is my 25th birthday. More specifically, at 11:30 PM (just half an hour from now), I will be 25 years old.
I’ve heard playful references to a “quarter-life” crisis hitting at 25, and I can’t say I don’t feel the vibes of it! I don’t look at it as a sudden awareness of my mortality, or a worry that my life is over before it’s even started. I think about it more in terms of a celebration of what is to come.
At 25, I’ve barely started my career. I haven’t gotten married, become a billionaire, and started a happy adorable family. That’s what success looks like, or at least the American Dream, right? I don’t know anyone who’s hit all of those checkpoints at 25, so suffice it to say, I’m certain my best years are still ahead of me.
This hit me in a wave on Sunday, when Aaron took me to a fancy restaurant for a pre-birthday birthday dinner. They were told that there was a “birthday” in our party, so they asked my name before seating us. When I said “My name is Mallory,” they replied, “Happy birthday, Valerie!”
Great songs aside, I get this a lot. Valerie, Melanie, Melody, Molly, I’ve heard every mispronunciation and seen every misspelling you can imagine. It’s gotten to the point where I don’t bother correcting people, and I’m certainly not offended by it by any stretch. You don’t meet many Mallorys, and according to my parents, I was not named after the character from “Family Ties,” they wanted to name me after my great grandfather Morris, and the name “Melissa” just didn’t feel right.
I last wrote about redefining expectations, and I think that my expectations are so ambivalent because I have two diverged dreams of what I want: I want to be that IT woman, the Anna Wintour-esque powerhouse type who has the corner office that gets written about in Forbes. I want to take NBC by the hand and lead it into the world of streaming digital media.
And then there’s another part of me who, if given thirty million dollars, would want to pay off my student debt, donate some of it to charity, and then go move to Australia and just eat fruit and surf all day. I went surfing once and I liked it, but I’d love to learn now and actually stand up on the board. Then I’d walk onto the shore and up to my beachfront house that has WiFi in every room and a coconut tree out back.
I think as far as mid-life crises go, being torn between two ideal universes is pretty mild-mannered.
Rather than focus on the potential, I want to focus back on the present. I didn’t have a big ostentatious party to celebrate my birthday, but I had an office of colleagues and work friends decorate my desk, sing me “Happy Birthday,” and bring me cake and pie and smoothies and balloons. I received a flurry of texts and messages wishing me happy birthday. Voicemails were left, as were letters and mail packages.
I genuinely don’t remember what I did for my 24th birthday, but I think I’ll remember today. The love I felt and the gestures I received made my heart feel so full.
Between the gifts and the well-wishes, I felt very grateful for the life I have. My family is kind, my friends are thoughtful, and the people in my space are open-minded with warmth in their hearts. It makes me want to hug the whole planet! If my life is this good now, at 25, I can only imagine what kind of life I will have when I hit that “mid-life crisis.”
After they had taken my “name” at the restaurant, they took a photo of Aaron and I, framed it, and wrote “Happy Birthday, Valerie!” in pretty calligraphy. It serves as a firm reminder to me of what I want from my future:
At 25, I am too quiet to correct someone who mispronounces my name. At 50, every room I enter will be one where everyone knows my name.
To the world, my friends, my family: thank you for a wonderful birthday, and a wonderful first 25 years. Let’s see what happens in the next 25!
