I am 38 today and I am finally doing grown-up things. At least if you take those things out of context. Lately, I’ve been isolating my experiences and trying to explain them to my 10-year-old self, my 15-year-old-self, my 20-year-old self. I’d like to believe that my 30-year-old self could see her life coming, but I’m not sure she did, either.

It’s goes like this. I look at 20-year-old me and I say–

“In a little under 18 years, you will be attending a dinner party on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, catered, in a Pre- War apartment with a grand piano. There will be people from France, South Africa, Poland, and the United States there. You will be performing a song– not your own– but of a dear friend from England, a musician friend, whose birthday it is. You will wear a bright green dress that you found in a thrift store that makes you feel a little like April O’Neill from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles with all of its buckles and zippers, and you’ll be attending and performing with the love of your life.”

This description gives me a buzz in the back of my head. Details fine enough that it must be believed. But the rest, out of context, makes my 20-year-old self utterly baffled. What did my life become? Am I famous? Do I live in NYC? Am I rich? Conventionally, what I believed it would take to have this scenario play out would require circumstances, money, compromise that my younger self would not and could not fathom. So then I lay it on her, dramatically, with a wink–

“And you are and have always been completely yourself.”

She almost never believes me. She rolls her eyes and conjures some back alley deals or crossroads selling of soul in her imagination.

I try another. I turn to my 10 year old self and say–

“In 28 years, you will wake up on your 38th birthday in a tent-like dome with a fluffy king sized bed covered in beautiful linens that overlooks the hundreds-of-years-old Redwoods in the mountains of California. You will be drinking coffee– black– that you picked up the week before in Reno, Nevada that the love of your life prepared and delivered to you in bed, as he does almost every morning. You’ll be eating a cinnamon roll half the size of your head, and preparing to go see the ocean that day. You will have as many mixed and big feelings as you do right now, but you will have a way to work them into good. California is not your home, but you have a home, on the other side of the country. You only see it sometimes because most of your time is spent traveling. You have a perfect big dog who is always with you. You sing. For a living. Your write and you sing and you meet people and that weird 3rd grade career day report that you turned in where you said you wanted to be Shania Twain when you grew up and had to redo because it was impractical so you said you’d be a veterinarian instead– you were right the first time. Well, kind of.”

She believes me. But out of context, she has a few more questions. So I tell her–

“And you are still exactly who you are.”

At this, she does not believe me anymore.

I try once more. To my 5-year-old self I say–

“In 33 years, you will wake up at last and know you are loved.”

She looks so relieved.

“It’ll only take 33 years?” she asks.

“Yes,” I will say.

“What do I have to do?” she says.

“Be yourself,” I say. “It’s already there inside of you.”

She accepts this. She believes me. She’s always believed in me.