Struggles of 20Something

I have been mulling over this piece for weeks now. Not knowing how to start it, rewriting a majority of it, and then staring at it for a prolonged period of time, to the point where all the text started to blend together into one black Times New Roman blob. I wasn’t even sure if I wanted to publish a piece that would inevitably become fairly personal, that would allow friends, family, and strangers a peek into parts of my life that I at times want to keep quiet. But I suppose that’s why it’s so important for me to write about this. 

Being a 20something-year-old is weird. It is fucking weird. When you’re in your early 20’s, you are neither a teenager nor an adult and it’s this odd middle ground that has no instruction manual on how to get it together. Most of the time I’m just kind of guessing my way through, hoping for the best.

At this age, at least for me, there are two sides of the early 20something coin (I’m sure there will be more sides to come, but I’ll cross that bridge when I get there).  In the beginning, there’s the life of a young adult, 18-21 years of age, in college and enjoying all the perks that come with that.  House parties full of half empty fifths, going to bars during the week yet still managing to make it to class the next day, a lack of responsibilities that come from not having a full-time job yet, and being surrounded by friends and peers who are close in age and stages of life. Flip to the other side of the coin at age 22-23, where college graduation has happened and the next path usually consists of continuing onto grad school where stress levels seem to result in an obscene amount of coffee consumed or the introduction of the “real world” aka the work force, where weeks are no longer run by classes but by commutes, 9-5’s, and exhaustion that seems to never really have an end. You wonder how so much of your life can change in just a couple short years where suddenly your priorities and lifestyles change.  At least that’s how it’s been for me.

I’ve written before about my transition from college life to working life and how I struggled with it.  I’ve touched on the struggle of the job hunt and how I focused on paying off my student loan, but I have kind of avoided discussing how this weird transition in my early 20’s has affected me emotionally and mentally.

I want to preface this next bit by saying that for the most part, I’m a pretty happy person.  I’ve made a lot of progress when it comes to my mental state, and most of the time, I feel pretty solid. I’m not going to turn this piece into a sob story, but there have been plenty of times in my early 20’s, especially once I graduated from college, when I felt like I was Sadness from Inside Out, doom and gloom written on my face like it was a damn birthday card.  I haven’t always been the “fake it till you make it” kind of girl when it comes to hiding my emotions, so for a period of time during my transition from college student to graduate, I was pretty mopey.  I’ve never been the biggest fan of change and in my early 20’s, that transition was the biggest change in my life and I didn’t know how to positively react to it.

When I first moved home, I’m going to be honest, I had a really hard time adjusting being away from my best friends and I had a huge fear of being forgotten or replaced by somebody else in their lives.  I didn’t feel like I had much of community when I moved back home and that was hard for me to adjust to.  For someone who grew up surrounded by the same people to moving to college and meeting friends through the dorms, classes, and work, I was suddenly in new territory of feeling pretty alone.  And eventually some people did stop putting in effort and some simply drifted apart, so that was something else I struggled to grapple with (shoutout to the ones who didn’t).  It was a time of loneliness and isolation that I think a lot of people do experience at some point in their lives.

None of this was made better by social media.  In an age of false realities, it’s easy to pretend like you have it together more than you actually do.  You can filter out blemishes, you can add a witty caption, you can pretend like your “candid” photo is actually candid.  It can become a façade to mask any insecurity or struggle.  But when you’re on the receiving end of those social media “realities”, insecurities can amplify.  You can see a Snapchat of your friends at a party and wonder why you weren’t invited.  You can see a photo on Instagram of a friend smiling and wonder why they’re so happy and you might not be.  You can see quoted tweets and wonder what kind of inside jokes are being shared without you.  To quote my girl Nancy in Stranger Things 2, it’s all bullshit.  I feel like being in my early 20’s, semi growing up in this social media age, it’s a struggle many people have to deal with.

So far I have outlined plenty of struggles of being a 20something-year-old, but I think the overarching struggle umbrella is figuring out who you are at this age.  I’m 23-years-old and still don’t feel like I have a locked down idea of who I am.  I do know that I can’t manage to keep my room clean for longer than two days and I can’t stop buying concert tickets.  I talk myself out of going to the gym more times than I actually go and sometimes I leave the house looking like a troll doll who hasn’t done laundry in a few weeks.  I do feel like I have made great strides though in figuring out the type of person I am and want to be compared to this time last year, but sometimes I do still feel very lost. One day I feel like I could not be more sure of who I am, then one thing can bring me all the way back to square one and to the drawing board.

Switching gears slightly, I will say, though I’ve been listing off complaint after complaint about the struggles of being a 20something-year-old, there is something a little exciting at being at this stage in my life.  There are a lot of possibilities for me and different avenues I can pursue.  I don’t have a lot tying me down right now and that’s a refreshing thought when it comes to everything I want to accomplish in life.  Maybe I can do everything I set my mind to.  While at times overwhelming, that sense of what can come feels like a book I’ve never read yet, but have been looking forward to breaking into.

Well, I feel like I have typed my little fingers to the bone and if you’ve made it this far, chance are this text has also blended together into one big Times New Roman blob.  So if you have made it to the end of my ramblings, thank you for sticking with me!  I hope that any of what I’ve said can maybe resonate with someone and that people can see a little bit of their own struggles in the ones that I’ve talked about.  I’m not good at ending pieces like this so I will just give a simple thank you again for those who stuck through this novel I managed to type out and who have supported me through all my 20something struggles so far, as well as a small word of encouragement for anyone who needs it.

Thank you, again. You got this.