There is a rooftop bar in East London that screens films for free every Tuesday night. It was here that I had a conversation that changed the way I thought about what my twenties would be. 

It was a humid June evening and crowds of skinny jeans and motorcycle jackets were waiting, with mojitos on thick mattresses spread across the synthetic grass, for sundown which was when it would be dark enough for the projector to cast a light on the brick wall in front of them. I was clearly out of place with my carton of lychee juice and the weathered paperback I was thumbing through to look like I enjoyed being on my own.

The man squeezed into the space next to me looked like he was doing the same with his iPhone. He looked miserably hot in his navy business suit and was eating a discounted sandwich bought from the corner shop across the road. I stuck my finger to the spine to mark the page I was stopping at and turned to face him. It was hard to tell how old he was—he had the skin and build of someone young, but his hairline was receding and his eyes looked a million years older than they should have been.

He had just moved to London from New York, a city I had left only weeks before. “It was to be near my girlfriend,” he said. “I’ve known her for eleven years but we only dated for two.” Past tense? “We just broke up,” he said. When I asked why, he winced. “I don’t think I can talk about it yet.” Wildly in love myself, I could imagine what he was going through but cut the thought off before I could believe in the possibility of something similar happening to me.

“What do you do?” I asked, desperate to steer him away from the pain he was wearing so visibly on his face. 

“I predict the future.” 

“You read palms?” 

“No. I work in finance.” 

“Oh.” 

“It’s not what I wanted to do. But it pays the bills.” 

“Yeah. As I grow up, I’m beginning to learn that life is hard.” 

He smirked. “As I grew up, I learned to let go.” 

I pictured nights spent out dancing, months spent backpacking; years spent making art and making love and discovering oneself in the process. I leaned back and took a swig of my lychee juice. “You learned to just let go and chill?” 

“No.” He paused. “I learned to let go of my dreams.” 

That night I came home and stared at the piles of books still stacked in the suitcase I had not had time to unpack; the stacks of notes for a novel I had outlined but had forgotten to start writing. That night I learned that dreams are not easy, especially when you have to pay your bills while trying to make them come true. That night I understood that my twenties were not going to be the romance I had made them out to be, but a challenge I had yet to really experience. And so I sat down at my desk and wrote long into the night until morning came, bringing with it the double shot espresso I would buy on my way to work. 

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This essay was written for Rent and Ice Cream, a project I collaborated on with designer Oliver Ballon. I wrote, he designed, and back then it felt like we could afford neither our rent nor ice cream.