Ines Turns 21

I never thought Ines would actually make it to 21. Not in a dark way—just that she always seemed like she’d stay seventeen forever, permanently wrecked from some village party, reeking of cheap vodka and bad decisions. The kind of person you figured time would just pass over.

Time doesn’t pass over anyone, though. The exhaustion just changes. Stops feeling earned and starts feeling like the actual weight of being alive. All those jokes about stretch marks and menopause—they’re savage, but they’re true. Time does exactly what you’ve always known it would. It just hurts more than expected.

I owe her anyway. The pieces she wrote about Tamagotchis falling apart, about kissing and wanting and that specific low-level dread of being young and stupid in the 2000s—they stuck with me. She found something true in all that confusion. And then there was the autumn in Munich, which was its own kind of education. The village parties that were genuinely foul, the drinking that was industrial, nights that were filthy and stupid and felt important because we were inside them. Probably none of it was as important as it felt, but it felt that way at the time.

There was a moment—short enough it almost doesn’t matter—where we were something real to each other. Not just two people who’d known each other. It had weight. The kind of weight that doesn’t actually leave, no matter how hard you try to let it go.

So: 21. That’s something. Happy birthday, Ines. Drink something terrible for me. I hope you’re still breaking things.