Prominent Queen est. 1995

Foreletter of #twentysixletters of #eLmar

One year after being twenty-six years old, I realized something: ‘Wait a minute, I did NOT get it all by the time I reached 25, and yet… I was still alive. The world was still rolling.’ So, why did I internalize that I must be all that by age 25? When I could be 26, like letters and alphabets, then 27, 28… still writing, rewriting, and learning, unlearning my life?

Since childhood – at least as a girl – I often hear this: “Get married by 25, with a husband, two children, a big chunk of savings, get a stable career, a house. It would’ve been good if you could send your parents worldwide to worship.’ Even more, there are worse genres of the tale, the sexist that basically tore women – me – from my own conscience and choice, ‘Give up all your life to be a mother and a devoted wife, the only important blessing to being a woman.’ 

So, there I became: twenty-five. The year I became twenty-five was the year when the pandemic was at its craziest. Even when I rewrote this letter and translated it to English two years later, life felt like a lucid dream.

I recalled my twenty-five as the beginning of the downfall of my emotional life until today, aged twenty-eight. That was even though I wasn’t so bad in the grand scheme. For example, I did have my savings. The most money I had ever seen; as someone who grew up in a tight economy, I was denied many choices. I was fortunate enough also that during those times, I discovered feminism when I learned that I could be happy with my choice of not getting married, let alone having kids. Ever. Indeed, there was stress caused by other people: I had to change my mind. Yet, when I had to retreat, I realized I never wanted that. I felt happy and fulfilled by that. 

Then, I was also twenty-five when I hit both the lowest point of my life. There was a specific incident when, to put it simply, today, I didn’t want to wake up. Ever. The incident genuinely let my life flash by my eyes in slow-motion, a dialogue within my head: ‘Hey, if we have worked the hardest our whole life, and this is all we get, marriage-childbearing pressure aside, why do we even try? The whole life will be like this, anyways.’

I was already so sure that that was the end of my life because I didn’t become anything society dictated me to be… I got the chance to pursue a life overseas through a scholarship for an education, which I had longed for for four years at the time.

Life was funny. I turned twenty-six. Life still went on.

That’s when I started thinking: Why does everything have to “arrive” by the time we are twenty-five? There are 26 alphabets—letters—27 cubes in a rubicon, a harmonic divisor number called 28, and so on. Life doesn’t have to stop, even when things go in ways that are not “typical 25.”

I wouldn’t dodge the fact that the world still seems to hate those over who are thriving after twenty-five. In the K-pop idols realm, those past twenty-five are considered “retired.” For many years, when a woman passed the age of twenty-five and still had not expressed a desire to marry (or even wanted to date) would be considered an “old maid.” Those who were twenty-five years old and still in their undergraduate studies were considered “uneducated.” If you are already twenty-five, but your salary is still below the minimum wage, it is regarded as a “failure.” However, the world is not that black and white. What I just mentioned is definitely nuanced, or not at all. Once again, I can only speak about the “truth” I have experienced.

Even so, I decided to write twenty-six letters to you. Twenty-six things I could only learn because I was past twenty-six. 

If I hadn’t gone through it, maybe I wouldn’t have reached this point, these thoughts. 

For context, when I wrote these letters, I was still unemployed. I’m broke. I don’t have a house of my own. I said I wanted to be a filmmaker, even though I have yet to produce many films. I wanted to be a dancer, practicing daily, yet I couldn’t even pick up choreographies within forty-five minutes. I’m a kid who graduated from pharmacy and then studied business, and I still don’t know what I want to be. Thus, I know that if you use the standard of ‘society’s success,’ I am a failure. I didn’t have anything when I was 25, nor do I know. And yet, somehow, I am still very much alive. Although it’s all in tatters, the world somehow still functions. So, is it true everything has to be there by the time someone is 25? I don’t know. I still don’t.

You need to know that someone else is an expert. 

I’m just an ordinary person who likes to ask questions, frequently protests, and often behaves like I know everything. I don’t. My letters contain many imperfections because reality will not be perfect. So, it’s your call to either read or ignore my letters. Whatever it is, I hope these letters can be meaningful to someone. These letters can lead us to a discussion. And if it finds you, I hope it finds you well.

Love, 

eLmar