Have you ever noticed how often people always talk about how living in your twenties is the “best time of your life” and in that same sentence, they would absolutely never return to that decade of their lives?
The appeal of being twenty, naive, sexy, and fun holds little to no weight in the way that it is lived. I have only been here for two years and I have to say it’s been probably the worst time of my life. Everybody that’s been through this decade begs you to savour it while it lasts, drink it all up and leave no drops… but I have a sneaky feeling that once it’s over there’s a greater sense of relief than there is grief.
DRIPPED IN THE MYTH
The fantasy and appeal of being in your twenties exists this plainly: alive, attractive, perky everywhere that matters, endlessly social and untethered, and it sounds so intoxicating in theory. But let’s be honest about it, that’s the version of youth we see in FRIENDS and on carefully created nostalgia Instagram posts. I am convinced that there is nothing actually glamorous or whimsical about being in your twenties, broke, confused, and always on the verge of running into cars in the street because you just can’t seem to figure it out; except for maybe the fact that once in a while you can afford to get your nails done.
There is nothing clean or pure about being in this decade. Your twenties are a collision of expectations, pixie dust and the reality of late-night regrets and confusion. They’re a collision of everything you’d hoped you’d be at this point in your life and what you’ve actually run into. They’re a collision of Pinterest perfection and surfacing trauma. It’s that in-between, half-awake and half-asleep state where nothing is stable but the spectacle somehow continues without your permission.
THE WEIGHT OF REALITY
We speak about the unspoken weight of wanting to be everything at once: pretty but respectable, successful but spontaneous, confident but so god-awfully unhappy with who you are, carefree but focused. That mental whiplash is nauseating and true, but nobody seems to know how to really fix it, and that’s actually the part that maybe hurts the most.
My expectation, much like what I assume everyone else’s is, is that age and experience come with clarity. The more time you spend sitting inside of your own body, the easier it surely gets to recognize when it’s hurting and how to fix it, right? But what if that awareness doesn’t actually land gently? What if inhabiting your body for longer doesn’t immediately bring you any answers, but instead just kind of magnifies the aches and pains? What if by the time you crossover, every insecurity, every unanswered question and every uncertainty just feels larger but more manageable?
WHAT SURVIVAL TEACHES YOU
Being twenty and living in what everyone calls the prime of your youth is excruciating precisely because it is unfinished, and this is the first time our brains are able to recognize what that looks like. You’re unraveling in real time, learning that maybe your best friend in the seventh grade wasn’t actually your best friend because you didn’t even know what that meant to you. You’re learning that your desires aren’t really your own but more so shaped by all of the things that, up until now, you didn’t realize you lacked. And you learn all this with no distance from preceding mistakes and close to zero hindsight to soften the blow.
Perhaps that’s why people romanticize so much of this era of your life. Maybe it’s because once you survive it all, you finally have the luxury of forgetting how sharp it felt while you were actually struggling through it.
