TIME TO PRETEND by MGMT. Story by Jennifer Manoogian.

Kiama, New South Wales,  December 2024

The summer I turn 24, I almost drown at Easts Beach.

I dive under the wave, but it slams into me anyway. It sends me tumbling, elbows knocking into the sandbank, saltwater stinging up my nose.

Just before I can come up for air, another wave smacks me in the face. The ground disappears from beneath me; I struggle and kick against an abyss, feeling like I’m falling deeper and deeper into a black hole, completely untethered from gravity itself.

My lungs squeeze, and for the first time, I feel genuine fear in the ocean. Feet desperately try to find purchase against solid ground, toes cramp in the strain to propel upwards, neck craning, nose and mouth tilted back. I claw my way up until I finally surface.

I violently cough out salt water and wipe away strings of mucus and saliva. Once the base instincts fade, I remember I wasn’t swimming alone.

My sister emerges from the whitewash a metre away, spitting and breathing raggedly. I look at her and all we can do is laugh. It reignites a burning in my lungs.

“Let’s go back,” I say, still choking.

My mum and aunty are watching us from the shore, laughing and signalling us to swim back. Completely unaware.

“Annaleise, I almost died,” I say through laughs of disbelief.

“Same,” she says. And we make a silent pact to not tell our mother.

We swim back to shore in good spirits, mirror our mum and aunty’s smiles, and trek back to our holiday accommodation.

We’re banished to the water-rotted back porch, deemed too sandy and damp to sit inside. My sister licks mango juice off her fingers, and I shake sand out of my book spine. My brother’s inside, drinking whiskey with my dad and uncles. He’s back from the UK for an upside-down Christmas, and for five days, everything is right again.

I go for walks along the coast, read, eat Christmas ham, play badminton, pickleball, and Cards Against Humanity, nap under the glow of a sunburn, drink Baileys, elbow my sister in the middle of the night, and drink, and read, and eat, and swim, and pretend that my birthday isn’t around the corner. I listen to Time To Pretend by MGMT. It first came out when I was 14, but I feel the sting of it now, ten years later.

I’m feeling rough, I’m feeling raw, I’m in the prime of my life.

I take stock of my own life as I bake on scorching sand and my little cousin furiously buries my feet. One degree, two casual jobs, one lofty dream in front of a camera, almost 24 years under my belt. Yeah, OK, it’s getting scary. I add my friends to the mix: manager, paralegal, theatre performer, sales assistant, psychologist, student, tech bro, P.A. Their lives are a kaleidoscope of cigarettes, retail therapy, break-ups, real therapy, rental bonds, trips to the Philippines, promotions, speeding tickets, working 11 hours a day, three hours a day, five days a week, two days a week.

I realise that I’ve fallen into my third year of trying on different jobs. I make a promise as the clock rolls into 2025 that I’ll find one that sticks this year. I reverse it as I blow out my birthday candles mid-January and promise myself that I won’t give up on acting yet. And in that moment, I know I will be rinsing and repeating for another 12 months.

I listen to the lyrics, we’re fated to pretend, like a mantra. Is this what it means to be in your 20s? To stumble around drunk on your youth, feeling the weight of the world, coming of age, only to realise you’re still playing pretend.

I listen to my friends make their goals for the year through the haze of Soju and screw top wine. I listen to one go back and forth between leaving a job, another between staying with a partner, another on moving interstate, another on dyeing their hair, and feel comfort in knowing I’m not the only one playing tug of war with my aspirations and age.

 Turning 24 feels like fighting against the lashings of salt water, forcing down the fear, choking and spluttering, just to emerge from the whitewash, look over and laugh.

Yeah, it’s overwhelming, but what else can we do?

Even when I feel the ground disappear beneath me, fight blind, and try to grasp onto something immaterial, I shake it off and mirror the smile of my sister.

I will eventually settle down and return to shore, but for now, I savour the feeling of the waves crashing over my head again and again.

Stereo Story #850

See also:

the Barbara Samuelson story about the MGMT song Electric Feel.

the Stephen Andrew story about the MGMT song Kids.