The Meaning of Life in Your 20s
Why is it so hard to find direction at the time you need it most?
I just graduated university, and like all people in their 20s, I have no clue what I’m supposed to do next. The world really sets us up for a fight against drowning at this age. We’ve never not been in school, we’ve never not had education for direction, and now, suddenly, that’s all gone and we’re expected to just figure it out.
Now, I know I speak from a place of privilege. I worked hard to go to university and stay here using jobs, loans, and scholarships. I worked harder than a lot of people I know because I, somehow, surrounded myself with people that don’t have to work or take out loans or pay their tuition, people that, now that school is done, have the money to take their time figuring their life out. Even so, I still got to go to university. I’m still beyond privileged for that, yet I feel like my education has set me up to fail–or at least flounder.
My education has set me on one path, a path that I feel distant from. It’s a path that I no longer want, yet my education turned it into the only option. I don’t feel smarter after my degree. I actually feel capable of less. I’ve spent four years boxing myself into this idea of a life and have been so contained by it that I don’t know how to do anything else.
It’s a lonely road fighting my way out of that box and trying to figure out who I am without it. I’ve learned too late that I’m suffocated by the city I got my degree in. I could have moved home to my family to give myself time to figure out who I am without the constant battle of rent money. I could have moved somewhere new and given myself a fresh start to give me the freedom to become someone I knew without the battle with my self consciousness about how the people I know perceive me. Instead, I stayed after I graduated because I was afraid. Everyone I know is here. The path my university set me on was here. Yet, only a month free of the education system, I’ve realized that it’s those exact things I was afraid to lose that are suffocating me.
Just like the path my education set for me, the way my friends perceive me has boxed me in. I found these friends through my university, friends who were happy with the path our education trapped us into, friends that only perceive me as a person through that path. I don’t want to be seen through that path. I don’t want to be surrounded by people that only see me as valid through the lens of how successful I am on that path and on that path only. It’s a path that has made them choose to age themselves. They’ve become career-driven, forty-two year olds in their twenties. There’s no more fun, no more exploration and connection, only the path. I don’t want that. It reminds me of my failure to be happy on the path. Because of this, I fear we’re drifting apart. I didn’t move because I didn’t want to be alone, and now I think that loneliness will find me anyway. They’ll find their people and their community on that path, one that I won’t be a part of. It’s hard to let myself be sad about that because I’m the one who’s leaving the path, yet I’m sad regardless. I stayed somewhere that made me happy for friends that are on a different path than me. It’s time for me to find people that can support me in my journey for a new path. It’s time for me to leave the city that’s suffocating me, yet I made this realization, too late.
I signed a lease because I was afraid to leave, now that lease has got me stuck here. It’s hard to figure out who I am in a city I don’t plan to stay in, a city that was only introduced to me through the lens of that one path. So, yes, I’m stuck. And, yes, it’s only another year, but a year in your 20s, a year where you’re free of the education system that’s cradled you for as long as you can remember, a year where you’re surrounded by the path you want to escape, a year where the only people you know are the ones on the path you rejected, a year where you’re drifting apart from everything you’ve built here feels so, so long and terrifying. A year knowing you need a fresh start, yet unable to begin it feels strange. It’s hard. And I know that not knowing is a part of being in your 20s. I know that when I’m 30 I’m going to look back on my twenties and know that none of this was as important as it feels, but I’m not 30. I’m 21 and at 21, it feels like everything you thought you were is falling apart. Now I just need to figure out how to start piecing it all back together again in a way that makes me happy.
