I tried not to relate to a lot of the "your 20s are this and that" crowd noise because I felt it to be too generic or label-defining. But in the past few months, it feels like I understand that sense of rush of accomplishing all your goals at once, and simultaneous drag as you watch people around you do everything better, faster and easier than you.
While you just wait, for some happenstance, some miracle to finally push you into overdrive. No matter how much of a hermit-like existence you try to achieve, unaffected by the humdrum of the world, you still get caught up in it's ever-expanding web and before long, you're at the epicentre of chaos, just flailing arms and a bobbing head, struggling to breathe barely enough to survive.
My own 20s are I feel, like this noose round my neck that keeps tightening itself and the more I try to push away and ask for some leeway, the harsher it pulls.
To achieve academically, professionally, financially, socially, maritally, every-fuckin-thing-ally before this unfaithful clock runs out, it's just too much. It's too much of everything, and everything that's wrong.
No wonder people make some of their worst mistakes in these years, but what choice do we have? It's like you were spat out of the womb in your teens and onto an inclined full-speed treadmill in your 20s.
Uncooked, unprepared, unfinished, just navigating through life-altering decisions left, right and centre.
And for those that had or have it easy, well, they're the ones that will shine the brightest and burn the fastest, but hey, that's what counts right? Now or never! It's Carpe Diem not "Carpe at-your-own-pace"!
These are the scariest years and all that we were promised, all the luxury of freedom and adventure, well, turns out mostly it was either a far-fetched dream or a reality just for a select few with the premium subscription on Life™!
And as we tread through these unknown waters, where everything we knew is constantly changing at a rate nearly impossible to keep up with, our only lifeline, we've been told is "ourselves". I wouldn't trust myself to take care of an inanimate object without breaking it let alone a barely-functioning human being.
But hey, all the advice we can get is "C'est la vie though, right?" And I can't explain just how hard it gets when it feels like the universe is hell-bent against you, to "make you learn important life-lessons firsthand and early on", whatever that bullshit is.
And how every day that you make through feels like a boulder collapsing on your head with a catastrophic degree of regret of unlived lives, while simultaneously lifting its weight from us as the release of inevitable death draws nearer.
So maybe the other side of this gets easier and less painful but hey, that's if we make it out alive, and last I checked, the chances of that happening are lowering as we speak.
P.S. felt a rant boiling up in my cranium so here's the word vomit
