Is Vienna Waiting For Me?

on the borderline of wanting to grow up and trying to slow down

13 Going On 30 (2004)

I rush past the blurred backdrops around me, an amalgamation of every place I’ve ever visited and every place I could ever imagine. I am running to catch something. Flashes of corner stores and shiny cars and familiar people, always in my way. Moving and not able to catch my breath. Going further and further until I start to realize that I don’t know why. I just know that it, whatever it is, isn’t waiting for me and I must try to get there in time, every time.

And then I wake up.

Slow down, you crazy child.

I was sitting in my college bedroom with my best friend, our joint playlist softly playing through her worn speaker. The curved white-trimmed window between our beds was open, the edges chipped from generations of girls opening it on late spring afternoons. The wind, musty and humid in the Gainesville heat of late April, slowly blew through the room. Summer entered early and held onto us for months here.

We stretched across our floor, our feet kicked up behind us and books spread out under our noses, fantasizing about the night ahead, the excitement still there for the same few bars we spent years going to, any topic to distract ourselves from studying. Graduation was weeks away, our last finals upon us. I was reading about derivatives, can you imagine anything more riveting to a college senior with her whole life ahead of her? Two tests and then I was unleashed. A newly minted adult powering her way to the life that awaited her on the other side.

I finally let myself get lost in a few pages, mostly out of desperation to get to the margarita that I would reward myself with after. But then the melody started.

I couldn’t tell you the song that was on before, or frankly, the song after. Only this one. This one will stand out to me every time.

The wistful piano, Billy Joel playing the keys across you, you can feel them along your collarbone, each note pulling a different heartstring. One key grounds you in where you are, the next flies you above, watching yourself as if it was 50 years later. Craving this past while you are still present in it, nostalgic of the moment before you even leave it. Vienna grabs your heart and plunges it into your stomach.

I looked over at my friend, her red curls spilling over her shoulder, twirling her favorite pen as she burrowed into her chemistry book. Thinking of how many hundreds of days we’ve gotten to sit here together. Thinking of the few that we had left.

I didn’t know things could wait. I was so excited to build my beautiful grown up life, how could I stop? But for this brief moment, on the borderline of being an adult, I wanted it to slow down. Just for this one, I let myself feel the magic of Vienna, and then we all sped off again.

You’re so ambitious for a juvenile

The song, like many lessons I’ve learned, seeped into me without really knowing. I sang the words over and over. But when you’re growing up, you don’t realize it’s talking to you.

I raced through the city. Walking fast through the rush hour streets, ready to catch my life, ready to arrive.

One afternoon I looked up and I was there. I didn’t remember the walk. Not the color of the flowers blooming on the tree or the couple holding hands or the smell of fresh bread from the corner bakery. I was running through the mental grocery list I kept of what I needed to pick up later, the text I needed to respond to, the next thing and the next thing after that, feeling a scratch in my throat, worried I might be getting sick - there was no way I could afford to lose a day or two.

I have no proof Vienna waits for me, I never give it the chance. I’m too nervous to take my time and realize it won’t be there. Worried about what I won’t get to instead of what I’m rushing through to get there.

And now, suddenly eight years later, I am Jenna Rink on the train back home while this song plays over. She sits there, the scenery passing by quickly behind her, as if it was every place she’d ever visited or imagined. Three young girls walk up to sit across from her and she gazes over at them, feeling as if it was just the other day she was thirteen too.

Realizing the loss of growing up too quickly, of trying to move too fast. Missing everything that’s unfolding before you because you are so focused on what you are becoming. Because if you don’t, will Vienna be there waiting for you?

If you’re so smart, tell me why are you still so afraid

I turned thirty - thirty, flirty, and thriving, the way we all wanted to be at thirteen - and I wonder what I sprinted past in all the years that came before this. Am I actually living the dream while I am in it? Or am I just racing to the next station over and over? Fucking terrified that I’ll miss the train. That I won’t get there in time.

I hear you Billy and I want to believe you. Every year, I think I’m getting closer but I’m not there yet. I find more moments where I slow, where I breathe. But I’m still not sure I fully exhale. When you see everyone around you sprinting, how do you decide that it’s okay to walk?

I see the girls sitting across from me in a cafe today, now studying for their finals. They look at me, at this version of my life, living the dream I ached for at twenty-two, and they say isn’t she so lucky. They want it now, to skip right to it. And then I look across the room at the woman cradling her baby, or the one who just launched her new company, and I feel the same old pull. Will I get there in time? Is Vienna waiting for me?

Slow down, you’re doing fine.