Twenty Something
It’s the age of parties, casual sex, being young, wild and free, and being on the brink of choosing who you are and what you want your life to be, all at the same time.
It’s the age of being young enough to dream big, but old enough to know that a so-called reality governs all our dreams. It’s wanting big things, wanting the best jobs, a lot of friends, a significant other, and a dream life that we want to cultivate young. With those aspirations, comes trying to make Instagrams out of real life, with just the right filters, the right people, and all the right things to make ourselves go ‘viral’. It’s the fear of settling, of attachment, of being too sad too soon, but not being happy enough. It’s the time we try to vigorously rub off our teenage vulnerabilities, to “adult”, and fit in seamlessly in a professional world. Too many people frown upon talk about being emotional, having mental problems, wanting to be mindful. Too many are taught to blend in instead of standing out.
Being twenty something means having to navigate across this complex terrain of new thinking in an old world, of wanting to be different but trying to be the same. It’s fighting for wanting big things, staying up and working hard. And when despite our best attempts, we fail, it’s fighting to not tell ourselves that “guess they’re right, all I’m cut out to be is average, I should focus on hiding just how much this failure hurt me, internalize it, and then find out how be the best at mediocrity and then call it reality.” It’s slowly developing wings, anticipating flight, experiencing failure, and then allowing that to determine our way forward. It’s the final act of growing up, of becoming who the world conditions us to be right from the beginning. It’s learning to become, but oddly enough, it’s unbecoming. It’s strange how as the years go by, we think of people besides our family and friends as an external standard, as a group of ‘others’, out there to judge us, to get us, to whom we must seem perfect, and it gets harder and harder to wear our hearts on our sleeves.
For better or for worse, we begin to translate being too emotional as being weak, we learn how to hide our scars, like a real adult. We face being broke, and not having a safety net to fall back on, being sick, and not having anybody to lean on. We face trade-offs between having a social life and managing a ‘real’ life, juggling a full calendar along with domestic responsibilities. At twenty something, we fall into emotional situations, both in relationships, and in general life. If we’re not careful, our fuck ups during this time become path dependent, our attitude becomes more and more cynical. After being ‘real’, we begin to lose faith in something out there for us, it gets harder to trust that dreams come true, and if we work hard enough, we can create the lives we want. Messy situations in friendships and relationships lead to concluding that all ties are temporary, all bonds a weakness. It’s fighting with our family because they can’t ground us when we disagree, it’s wanting to be our own persons, but desperately hoping that it’s a person just like everyone else. Being lost is something every twenty something feels, it’s an age of figuring too many things out, and it always somehow feels like we’re in this phase all alone, irrespective of how many of our friends would probably relate. Ambitions, dreams, and goals come together with anxieties, insecurities and fear.
It’s hard to handle things we’ve never had to before, we have no idea just how to get to the other side sometimes. We’re young enough to be stupid but we’re also old enough to know better. We want to do the best we can, we don’t always know how to. Whether we want to or not, we’re learning. We’re becoming. Please be patient, we’re only twenty something.
