âItâs taboo to admit that youâre lonely. You can make jokes about it, of course. You can tell people that you spend most of your time with Netflix or that you havenât left the house today and you might not even go outside tomorrow. Ha ha, funny. But rarely do you ever tell people about the true depths of your loneliness, about how you feel more and more alienated from your friends each passing day and youâre not sure how to fix it. It seems like everyone is just better at living than you are. A part of you knew this was going to happen. Growing up, you just had this feeling that you wouldnât transition well to adult life, that youâd fall right through the cracks. And look at you now. La di da, itâs happening. Your mother, your father, your grandparents: they all look at you like youâre some prized jewel and they tell you over and over again just how lucky you are to be young and have your whole life ahead of you. âGetting old ainât for sissies,â your father tells you wearily. You wish theyâd stop saying these things to you because all it does is fill you with guilt and panic. All it does is remind you of how much youâre not taking advantage of your youth. You want to kiss all kinds of different people, you want to wake up in a strangerâs bed maybe once or twice just to see if it feels good to feel nothing, you want to have a group of friends that feels like a tribe, a bonafide family. You want to go from one place to the next constantly and have your weekends feel like one long epic day. You want to dance to stupid music in your stupid room and have a nice job that doesnât get in the way of living your life too much. You want to be less scared, less anxious, and more willing. Because if youâre closed off now, you can only imagine what youâll be like later. Every day you vow to change some aspect of your life and every day you fail. At this point, youâre starting to question your own power as a human being. As of right now, your fears have you beat. Theyâre the ones that are holding your twenties hostage. Stop thinking that everyone is having more sex than you, that everyone has more friends than you, that everyone out is having more fun than you. Not because itâs not true (it might be!) but because that kind of thinking leaves you frozen. Youâve already spent enough time feeling like youâre stuck, like youâre watching your life fall through you like a fast dissolve and youâre unable to hold on to anything. I donât know if you ever get better. I donât know if a person can just wake up one day and decide to be an active participant in their life. Iâd like to think so. Iâd like to think that people get better each and every day but thatâs not really true. People get worse and itâs their stories that end up getting forgotten because we canât stand an unhappy ending. The sick have to get better. Our normalcy depends upon it. You have to value yourself. You have to want great things for your life. This sort of shit doesnât happen overnight but it can and will happen if you want it. Do you want it bad enough? Does the fear of being filled with regret in your thirties trump your fear of living today? We shall see.â
â Youâre Not Making The Most Of Your 20s by Ryan OâConnell (via hidingfromoursins)
reposted this 10 years ago and itâs even more relevant now đ
