Aging, at all. I want that. And to fall/ perhaps most honestly in love/ beside the ocean, in a home I’ve paid/ for by doing as I like: drinking good wine, dusting sugar over a croissant, or the stage play I am writing myself into.

Rio Cortez

At 15, the prevailing medical wisdom was that I could expect to live until around the age of 35. There might be bonus years, but those could not be guaranteed. (At that time, that was the conventional thinking about Turner syndrome.) At that moment, aging became what I want. Defining my life — as brief as all life is, really — on my own terms became a familiar pursuit. Travel, degrees, careers doing what I love, and falling in love all became figure to the ground on which I walked.

It has taken me a lifetime to be grateful for life itself. I would have loved to have been able to take it all for granted. To have not viewed life through the lens of a diagnosis. To have not had to make choices that depended on the weight fewer days. To have not had to pay attention with the veracity of fewer moments to see. To have not had to understand in my bones each day is a blessing. Perhaps that is my fascination with wide-awakeness — with the deep understanding that we are all both in and of the world. I asked existential questions long before I knew what existential questions were. We are asked to find awe and wonder every day. We are asked to seek joy in the same way we breathe. We are asked to be loving and kind. To age at all is a gift.