Maybe someone will hear this, and enjoy their twenties in a way I couldn’t.
I’m 48 now, and my life is honestly just beginning. It’s only in the last couple of years that I’ve felt like I have anything figured out, and I – and every other adult – is really just kind of faking it most of the time.
Because we were told, over and over again, “grow up and be responsible” so we made the destination the point, and missed a lot of the joy of the journey.
Yes. “Growing up” is a thing we all need to do, and we all eventually do.
But when you’re in your 20s? Live your life! Enjoy your life! You’re going to make a million mistakes. You’re going to fall down a thousand times. That’s part of being in your 20s, and it’s really okay.
You are not the trash that needs to be taken out. You aren’t trash at all. You’re a person and you deserve to be happy and to follow your dreams (and not everyone in their 20s knows what their dreams even are!).
But the most important thing I want to share, the thing I know at least one of you needs to hear, that I hope you can hear and really act upon, is this: Don’t give yourself “my 30th birthday” as a deadline to have it all figured out and happening.
When you do that, as I did, you completely lose the fun and the joy and the freedom that is such an essential part of your twenties.
All these questions you have, all this turmoil you feel, all the stress about not being further along your career path … all of that is totally normal. All of your peers are experiencing it. Everyone who was in their 20s before you has experienced that.
You’re going to be okay. Keep asking the questions, and keep challenging your presumptions. You’ve been told the world is one particular way, by your parents and educators, and now that you’re in your twenties, you get to find out what was true. Figuring all that out takes a lot of time and a lot of energy. You can do it.
I feel everything the OP posted here, in my memories of being 25, and I want the OP to know that I felt all of those things, too. They’re part of life’s journey, and you are not trash for experiencing all of them.
