I’m on a train right now, on my way to celebrate my birthday with some of my favorite people.
Which feels exactly like the kind of moment you’re supposed to be fully present for. And I am, mostly. But there’s also this quiet layer underneath this sense that something has been building in the background for a while, and today just happens to be the day it surfaces.
Thirty-five feels less like an age and more like a realization I’ve been postponing.
Not dramatically. Not in a life-changing, movie-scene kind of way. More like something that’s been quietly loading in the background for years, and now finally opens all at once.
I didn’t just grow older. I became someone who has to live with her own choices.
If my twenties were a long audition for a life I didn’t fully understand, my late twenties were when I accidentally stepped into it. That’s when things stopped being hypothetical. I started living;not like sun-drenched, everything aligns kind of way, but in a messier, more honest one. The kind where you realize you’ve been holding your breath for years and no one told you to inhale.
People love to say, you can’t have it all. They think they do you a favor, like a warning wrapped as wisdom. I heard it differently. Not as advice, but as something to disprove.
So I tried.
I tried to build a life where nothing had to cancel something else out. Where I didn’t have to choose between love and independence, ambition and softness, stability and excitement. I thought if I worked hard enough, wanted things clearly enough, insisted long enough, I could keep everything.
But life, it turns out, is not a collection. It’s a series of trades.
I didn’t notice it at first. It never announces itself as loss. It feels like progress. Like growth. Like becoming.
Then slowly, the exchanges started to show.
I became someone who plans things instead of just stepping into them.
Someone who thinks ahead instead of reacting in the moment.
Someone who measures her energy, her time, her attention, more carefully than before. Just small adjustments that quietly reshape you.
Time for stability.
Freedom for closeness.
Certainty for excitement.
There was always a cost. Always something leaving as something else settled in. Not loud enough to stop me, but steady enough to define the direction.
I became very good at choosing and very bad at accepting what those choices meant.
At some point, those choices became physical.
I moved, several times.
And with that, everything became a little more structured, a little more deliberate. Spontaneity turned into something you arrange. Plans stretched further into the future. Life started to feel more organized, more predictable, more… contained.
And somewhere in that shift, I realized what I had traded.
Light.
Not just literally, but in the way it shapes you without asking. The kind of ease that makes everything feel slightly more open, slightly more possible. I didn’t know how much I relied on it until I lived without it in the same way.
I gave up something I never thought I’d have to choose. And in return, I built something else: a life that works, a life that functions, a life that… fits.
And maybe that’s the thing about choices.
They don’t just give you something new. They quietly rewrite who you are around what you kept and what you let go.
For a long time, I avoided fully seeing that.
Not choosing felt safer. If I didn’t commit, I could pretend I still had everything. Potential is comfortable like that, it lets you live inside possibilities without facing consequences.
But real life doesn’t work like that. At some point, you have to decide. And deciding means losing something. Every time.
I wasn’t good at that.
I think I avoided being an adult in ways that looked impressive from the outside. Busy, productive, “doing well” all the right indicators that conveniently hide the fact that you’re not actually taking ownership of your life.
That changed slowly.
Somewhere in the last few years, I became someone who knows what she wants. Not in a dreamy, abstract way,but in a clear, sometimes inconveniently specific way. I learned how to say no. ( take your time Elif, no rush !)
I say what I love now. Out loud. Without editing it down to something more acceptable.
I’ve become more sensitive, not less. I notice more. I feel more. And because of that, I tolerate less. My tolerance has shrunk, but my clarity has grown. And strangely, so has my strength.
There are more days now where I feel strong than days where I feel lost.
Not because life got easier.
But because I stopped negotiating with it.
At thirty-five, I don’t think you can have it all.
But I also don’t think that was ever the point.
Maybe the point is choosing what matters and being honest about what it costs you. Maybe it’s accepting that every life is built on trade-offs, but some of them start to feel less like losses and more like decisions you can stand behind.
Or maybe the point is smaller than that.
Maybe it’s just noticing.
Noticing the life you’ve already built before you rush to improve it. Noticing the people who stayed, the versions of you that survived, the quiet ways you’ve become someone you once needed.
I still catch myself trying to negotiate. Trying to keep one more door open. Trying to rewrite a decision I already made, just in case there’s a version where nothing hurts and everything fits.
There isn’t.
But there are moments,unexpected, unplanned, a little imperfect where things feel right enough that you stop adjusting them.
And lately, I’ve been having more of those.
Not big ones. Not life-defining ones. Just small, ordinary moments where I’m not thinking about what else could be happening instead.
And that feels new.
At thirty-five, I’m not trying to have it all anymore.
I’m just trying to recognize when something is already mine..
and stay there long enough to actually live it.