I'm getting a little tired of all these articles about not wasting your 20s, about throwing caution to the wind and doing all the things you always wished because with age comes responsibilities, blah blah..bills now anyone? I'm tired of everyone asking me about my job, my graduate school plans, my relationship, my future. I'm tired of going into trendy stores, grabbing what I think is my size and needing Crisco to get the ill-fitting garment off of my no longer pre-pubescent body. I'm tired of probing rhetorical questions that send me off into an abyss of my own mind as if I don't do that on my own enough.
It's in few sobering moments that your 30+ friends will really admit to you that the early 20s actually kind of sucked. That what they thought was the time of their lives galavanting from bar to bar, hooking up with randos secretly wishing that each new toad would be their frog prince, sitting in jobs they hated because student loans and credit card bills from those same bars and boozy brunches in the City wouldn't pay themselves was really just a rite of passage. Don't get me wrong, those bar crawls and eye-canoodling with a new sexy stranger each weekend have their places in your life and the 20s are it. But let's quit not acknowledging that each of us is really searching and wishing to find all the answers about ourselves, to truly know what makes us happy and what we want out of life so we can stop falling on our faces chasing what we've been conditioned to want. Wait, I think...Is this a quarter-life crisis happening?
I've been conditioned, some way some how, to go to an ivy-league college, go to a top 5 professional graduate school, pursue a career as an executive of some sort, meet and marry a peer along the way, climb the corporate ladder until I decide to take maternity leave, which may or may not be 3 months or 6 years until "the kids" are in school, then to pursue my true passion of writing, with the cushion that my stint in the professional world or my equally/more successful husband's wealth will provide, since they don't call them starving artists for no reason... Oh and all of this is to be done by 35. o_O...That ish cray.
The reality is that there's no room along that type of path for the stumbles that will inevitably occur to teach you the life's lessons that you are unable to teach yourself for lack of experience. I'm not really sure if I want to be a professional, not even positive I want to have kids I just think as a woman I should experience the miracle of carrying life inside me even though that's a really creepy thought, and marriage - when I sit down and really think about it...it scares the crap out of me. Weddings and marriage are NOT the same thing, every girl wants the bling and to plan the party of a lifetime where she's the belle of the ball, but realize that after it, you've joined your eat, sleep, breathe, poop, every single day moments with another human being. HUGE DEAL...HUGE!!!
I'm really tempted to create a new board on my Pinterest account called "Reality" and pin pictures of screaming children throwing tantrums in Target while mothers are shopping for all their DIY doohickys, of the house looking an absolute wreck while "hubby" is sitting on the sofa watching football and drinking a beer, family meetings where husband and wives are sitting at the kitchen table staring at a stack of mortgage, property tax, tuition, ballet, tennis, gym membership and country club bills to keep up with suburban life. You know, just as a reminder to slow the freak down.
So yes, I will enjoy my 20s as a time with a different type of responsibility, with a different type of freedom. The freedom to say "I don't know what I want to do with my life" or "I don't give a rat's patootie what you think" or "Yes, I will take another slice of chocolate cake, thank you" because I'm tired of depriving myself of life's moments both good and bad chasing an ideal and avoiding "mistakes". You only live once, nothing is a waste of time, everything happens for a reason and every experience is a lesson learned. If people would take a moment to stop judging under the guise of guidance, say a few more kind words instead of negative ones, they might realize that everyone out here is just trying to make it. Reality is that grad school apps and entry to mid level jobs blow. Real relationships #1-5 are struggle city because no one has a clue what they're doing. Debt comes and goes and it's ok. Life is not the classroom. If there was an Over-Analyzers Anonymous group somewhere, I might just sign myself up. Because I really want to be able to quiet my mind and just live. As I yearn for peace of mind, I begin to realize what's really missing. A stronger relationship with God. Maybe I'll start there.
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