Are Your Twenties How You Imagined?
Susan, a twenty-something hailing from Pennsylvania with a BA in English, created and writes at Twenty(or)Something, a blog focused on a blend of career and personal development with a mix of creativity and reminiscence. You can follow her on Twitter @20orsomething.
An older friend once wrote to me that he would never wish to revisit his twenties for all the money in the world. It’s the most trying period in any lifetime, he had said, and were I still tacking “teen” onto the end of my age, I would have questioned him — your twenties should be a thrilling time of newfound freedom, after all. However, now, the older I get, the more I realize that he couldn’t be more right.
When I was younger, I couldn’t wait to be twenty.
I thought that there was something magical about this time of your life — going to college, getting your first job, falling in love, buying a house or renting an apartment…It seemed like this was when your life really began — independence poured through your veins and you glowed with youth while you finally made your way into adulthood.
Life was for the taking, you believed. You could be anyone, do anything, and go anywhere. The life that you’d imagined since childhood was laid out, a set path that you couldn’t wait to get started on. You were ready to grow up; you were ready to be an adult.
What you weren’t ready for was the greatest obstacle you could imagine.
Yourself.
Some claim it to be a quarter-life crisis; others call it a simple loss of identity. However it‘s labeled, it makes for one of the most difficult times of any young life.
When you’re an adolescent, you get a free pass for all of the mistakes you might make. You’re trying to find and define yourself, to see where you fit into the world, to figure out just who you are as an individual. You might try new hairstyles, new clothes, new hobbies, and make new friends in the search for self-identity, and not only is it accepted, but it’s encouraged.
In your twenties, however, you’re expected to have all of that already figured out. Yet in your twenties, you might feel just as lost.
Once again, you’re caught between two stages of life — not a child by any means, but not yet an adult. Suddenly thrust into a world of responsibility that comes with that independence you’ve always craved, you’re still struggling to reconcile who you were with who you long to be, trying to find, once again, where you belong in a world that you are suddenly so aware you’re a part of — a world that has changed, just as you have changed.
Just as you will continue to change.
Once upon a time, I believed that my life would begin once I reached my twenties. I couldn’t wait to become the adult I had always longed to be, that I knew I was at heart. I already knew who I was, I knew where I was going, and I knew what I wanted. But despite all of that, I never once realized that challenges can temporarily stand in your way, that dreams can change, or that self-identity is a process of constant rediscovery.
There isn’t a magic transformation that turns you into an adult the day you turn twenty. And the change doesn’t suddenly occur when you turn 21 or 25 or even 30. Growing up is a process in and of itself, one that takes its own time, that occurs when you least expect it.
Before you know it, you’ll turn around and look behind you at the years that have passed, you’ll see how much you’ve changed, how much you’ve learned, and how much you’ve really lived. And that’s when you’ll realize that it’s not the age that matters.
It’s all up to you.
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