If I have learned anything since then, it is that you cannot run away from who you are or from how you’ve been shaped by your experiences. Instead, you must integrate your past and present. As Salman Rushdie observed after the fatwa was issued against him, “Those who do not have power over the story that dominates their lives, power to retell it, rethink it, deconstruct it, joke about it, and change it as times change, truly are powerless, because they cannot think new thoughts.”
So many people say they wish they could be young again. You couldn’t drag me back to twenty-one. All the hiding, all the pretending, all the hanging out with people you don’t actually like. Going out three nights in a row? RuPaul’s Drag Race is on. Making out in the grass? I own a perfectly good couch. Always fighting with your friends? I am no longer confused about what the word “friend” means. And to top it all off, if you woke up tomorrow and you were young again, you’d have to deal with creepy married dudes feeling entitled to easy sex with you because your generation is supposed to be “more liberated.” Pass.
If you’re not glad to be you, then who will be?
Pen and watercolor, Rebel13, January 2018
Acrylic on stone by LVL
Rebel XIII 
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