There will be a day where I am old. That is if life goes as planned. If life goes as planned, there will be a day where I am old and where my skin sags more than it used to and where it is full of deep wrinkles that came from years of living, and where peppered gray hair will grow from my scalp like wildflowers coming from the ground below. I will become much frailer and my bones will be much more wobbly than they used to be, and I will thrive on giving my grandchildren simple pleasures, simple little gestures that will stick in their young, growing minds for years to come that I won't be present for. My home will be filled with frames that sit on top of end tables and mantles that hold pictures of my children and their children, various pets that I have grown to love over the years, and miscellaneous photographs of distant family members and of myself and the love of my life. I will fill my now empty days with brunching and book-clubbing, and visiting my children will be the main thing that I look forward to. One day, I will know exactly what life had in store for me. That is if life goes as planned.

* * *

I have always been hopeful, but strangely pessimistic. It's been the most confusing part of myself, in my opinion. I have successfully been able to both hope for the best and to think negatively at the same time. "Oh, this is going to suck." "I'm not going to have fun, today's not going to be a good day" and other negative phrases to set me up for failure are common within my vocabulary. I have always said these negative things to myself, but hope always stuck around, even in my worst of thoughts.

When I started going to therapy during the tenth grade, my therapist told me that the first thing we were going to work on was my constant negative tone towards myself and insulting myself. As if I had a choice of what I wanted help with. "Every morning, I want you to look in the mirror and say three positive things about yourself," she would recite to me during every session. "I even want you to write these things down on your mirror with a dry-erase marker, like an EXPO marker, and I want you to catch yourself when you're saying something negative about yourself and try to make it positive". I sat and stared at her blankly until she further explained this. "For example, if you hear yourself starting to say something like I'm bad at.. I want you to change it to I can improve or I can practice in... Do you understand?" I agree, nodding in a way that brings my whole head and upper neck down with me, a full head bob that I just know looks ridiculous.

During every session, she would ask me if I practiced speaking better of myself. I always assured her that I did, making me a liar. When she would ask me why I chose to see things negatively, I would recite these words to her, the same words I'd tell anybody else if they asked me why.

"I just don't want to feel disappointed in everything anymore."

* * *

When I am old and stuffed full of love that comes from clumsy hugs from the small bodies my grandchildren inhabit and through hearing a tiny, high-pitched voice say "I luff you gamma", I will have the opportunity to tell stories. Stories about my childhood, about the memories that I have of my mother and how close we were, stories about all of my friends and the birthday parties that I had every single year. When I look into the future and think of myself telling these stories, the only thing absolutely can know is that I won't stuff my innocent, big-eyed grandchildren's minds with anecdotes about my mother's mental illness, or how her addiction affected me just as much as it did her; but instead, I'll sit them down and tell them everything good, anything and everything positive that I can pick out of my brain.

Growing up, my mother and I maintained a very close relationship despite all the chaos that was present in our lives. At least once a week, her and I would choose a movie to watch; some old, some new, most of them chick-flicks and feel-good movies, and she would tuck me up in her bed before running out to the kitchen for snacks, pillows cradling my back and blankets draped over my legs, coming back just as the movie was beginning with a tray full of different foods. I could never forget the sight of her stumbling back into the room, both hands full of the tray she was carrying, saying "Okay I got a smorgasbord for us!". In these smorgasbords, there were almost always cookies, chips; and fruit always being there. (It wasn't until about eight years after we stopped doing this that I realized a smorgasbord was a real thing, and not just some word she made up.)

Throughout the years, we must have watched at least 50 different movies; some we thought were bad, others we fell in love with. On nights where it was my turn to choose the movie, I would layout at least four different movies on the bed, trying to decide between them, eliminating one at a time. "You always pick out the best movies Syd" she would compliment me, "I'm not sure how you do it".

Every year on Halloween, my mother always helped me choose my costume; dressing me up to the fullest. Face paint and hair-spray would sit heavily upon my face and scalp, making a younger and more irritable me want to claw my way out of the layers that felt suffocating, but tied my costume together perfectly. Over the years, I went from dressing up as a cat (my favorite costume as a child), black paint drawn into whiskers across my cheeks and wearing a leopard print leotard with stockings to being the mad hatter, orange hair-spray coloring my naturally sandy-brown hair and feeling claustrophobic as hell in what felt like a thousand layers, but really were only three. Upon dressing me up, my mom would always gather me and my neighborhood friends together to take hundreds (and I'm not exaggerating) of pictures, just enough to annoy me before sending me off with my father and one of my closest friends (or two) to go trick-or-treating. My father walking with me to trick-or-treat was a tradition that has happened for as long as I can remember, from when I was itty-bitty until I eventually stopped trick-or-treating altogether. Every year, he would tell me how he looked forward to this, and I swear I can still hear his voice when I think of how he would always say "So Syd, what are you dressin' up as this year? You always do something so cool".

When I am old and full of stories from time spent with my parents, I hope that I can still remember all of these good things. I hope that I remember these memories, so when my grandchildren ask me what my mom and dad were like, what their great-grandparents were like, I can tell them something good. Maybe it'll help me realize how hard my parents did try, and that nobody's perfect after all.

* * *

When I'm old, I imagine myself sitting at the coffee table in my living room, wearing a big sweater with my hair up, drinking a cup of tea and smoking a cigarette; just like how I remember my grandmother used to. My grandmother and I were always close, oddly similar, so I'd imagine that this is how I will turn out (minus the cigarette smoking, most likely). I was the first grandchild, the wittiest and brightest of us all, so my grandmother and her two closest sisters, Katherine and Jenny, used to gather around the table, drinking their tea and taking puffs off their cigarettes, talking to me and admiring my young and imaginative mind. I don't remember these days much, but my Aunt Katherine told me all about them when I went to visit her in New York back when I was sixteen. "Your grandma loved you so much," she said to me as we sat on the subway, on our way to SoHo. "You don't even know how much. I know that if she was alive today, she would be so proud of you."

"Really?" I asked her in a cheery, hopeful kind of tone.
"Yes... And you look more like her by the day, God... you really do."

I never really felt close to my grandmother ever since her death, I was only eight when she passed, but talking to Katherine on a subway bench in New York that day made me feel closer to her than I think I ever have before.

When I'm old and my grandchildren ask me what my grandma was like, I'll tell them that she was just like me; a little more Irish than I am and from the Bronx, and that I don't remember her much; but I know that she is who I'm most like in my entire family.

* * *

By the time my grandchildren are born, I can only imagine that children will be playing with computers and other expensive electronics casually, just like my friends and I used to color and play with Barbies to pass the time as if it was nothing. As most children do, my grandchildren will wonder what it was like for me growing up, "What did you do all the time without a computer?" they'll question me with eyes big and full of curiosity of something that they couldn't even fathom. "Well," I'll start off by telling them about my neighborhood friends growing up. "All of the kids in the neighborhood used to get together on nice days, even hot days," I'll begin, "we used to draw along the street in our cul-de-sac in chalk, I remember we used to draw fake roads with fake street signs, and when we were done with drawing our little make-believe towns, we used to 'drive' on them with our scooters and bicycles as if they were real roads" I'll explain, and my grandchildren's eyes will widen with curiosity.

Going back to those days brings more than just memories, they bring different sensations as if I can still feel all of it. I can feel the sun baking on the top of my head, most certainly burning my scalp; I can feel the heat sweltering around me, although I never let the temperature bother me, because the game of tetherball that me and a girl down the street are playing is just... so... important. One of the memories that I can feel the most is the temperature change as my friends and I run from the outside heat into our cooled, AC'd homes to grab something to eat or drink. We drink juice out of pouches and suck on blueberry, cherry, strawberry-flavored popsicles until our mouths are sticky and colored from the dye and we are recharged, ready to go back to the fun, ready to run and jump and skip and draw until the sun goes down; until our parents voices ring from behind front door's with a "Time to come inside for the night!".

By the time I was ten, my mother decided that I needed to get involved in something after school. We had already tried everything; soccer, basketball, gymnastics, dancing (both ballet and tap), volleyball, and karate; but nothing stuck. As a final attempt to get me to do something, I was signed up for an art class, out of school, taught by a teacher at my elementary school in a corner of her home, a little room designated just for her art. We never thought that it would stick, just like everything else. Three years later, we realized that something finally worked.

These three years were spent painting, drawing, crafting, snacking, and creating friendships that I could've sworn were going to last forever. There were six of us in the class, all girls except for one boy named Nick. We quickly grew to love each other, each day spent belly-laughing over stupid jokes and through little things that would happen. Shortly after she stopped teaching the class Mrs. Coleman sold her home and moved somewhere new, but something in me always wishes that one time, just one time, everyone could get back together to spend a day painting and crafting just like we used to. But without that house and without the little art room, I know it wouldn't feel the same.

When my grandchildren ask me what I loved to do while growing up, I'll tell them about my little art class with Mrs. Coleman, and how she was the sweetest woman I've ever met. I'll tell them about how through that, I met my best friend Olivia, and of how happy going to each class made me. I'll tell them.

* * *

By the time I graduated high school, I had a new therapist. This one went by the title Dr. Smith, and I was referred to go to him through my mom. During my first session with him, I sat across from him on his old, worn and slouchy and faded couch, picking apart nearly every detail in his office. He spoke to me in a slow and calming yet somehow dull voice, my mind wandering as he went on to tell me advice that I knew I definitely wouldn't be following. My eye spotted a bookshelf next to the chair he assigned for himself, and all of the different books on therapy, as my eyes studied the bookshelf, I realized that there must have been at least thirty books on cognitive therapy, psychotherapy, different forms of coping, and other self-help information, and I know that he hasn't read all of them I think to myself, there's no way he has.

The one thing I like about Dr. Smith more than I ever liked about Dr. Jones is the praise that I always get from him, and that I never got from her (of course, this praise is strictly professional and nothing out of the ordinary). With each issue I describe to him, I always know the outcome: he sits back, pauses, thinks.. and then explains to me how he thinks that my reaction is "actually quite healthy", how he thinks that my decisions are good for me and could help me thrive, even when I know that they're terrible choices. He tells me that I'm going in the right direction, and often refers to me as a "writer", which I adore because not many people, not even myself, would call me that yet. Dr. Smith tells me the things that Dr. Jones always wanted me to tell myself, and somehow that has always felt ironic.

I can't remember the last time I spoke about myself negatively. I can't remember the last time I took the time to say to myself that something about myself was wrong, that I was hopeless, that I couldn't do better. Nowadays, self-loathing is granted only when my actions are selfish, hurting others, or just neglectful. Ever since speaking to Dr. Jones last, I've been better at it. I just haven't been as mean to myself. Talking to her taught me how to fix that; somehow, someway. Talking with Dr. Smith has taught me to take each bad moment at a time. Important: Don't anticipate them. Try to not dwell on the bad things, because they're few and far between. He taught me that I'm doing my best, even when I don't believe it. I'm trying to tell myself every day that I'm not being irrational or selfish or stupid, I'm just being human.

Whenever I lose sight of this and I start to feel negative and hopeless again, I sit down and try to breathe. Deep breath in.. 1...2...3.. deep breath out... 1...2...3... I slow down and slowly repeat to myself in my head

These bad moments don't make me anymore. They never truly did. When I'm old and telling my grandchildren what my life was like, who I used to be, would I tell them about my pain? No. Because that's not who I am.

* * *

By the time my hair turns gray and I have much less energy than I do now, I will have a million more stories to tell. My children and their children will listen to me repeat the same ones over and over again, reminiscing on my fondest moments as I sit back in a chair at a table, drinking tea just the way my grandmother used to. When I'm old, I'll remember all of the best moments: watching movies with my mom, going trick-or-treating with my dad, making friends with the neighborhood children and falling in love with art. And as my life comes to an end, these are the moments that will make me who I am. My little failures, my little bad days, my little screw-ups will no longer matter; but all of the love in my heart will. And I will remember that love as I watch my family grow into something that I never could've imagined. That is if life goes as planned.