Your Twenties
March 29, 2024
“The greatest time in your life”, they say.
Your twenties.
Even when writing this now, I can’t help but laugh.
I’m only three years into my twenties “experience” but already it’s been a constant of building up and breaking down. I start something, finish it, and have to start again. It’s a perpetual reinvention of myself.
For my friends it’s a similar story: relationships build and break, jobs start and end, and the mental states of us all fluctuate from moments of calm to complete destruction.
Building up and breaking down.
I guess that’s all of life, in the most simple of terms. Building up jobs, relationships, ideas, and boundaries, just to have most of it crumble, either through the inevitability of change or death, both of which seem to be two sides of the same coin.
Life builds and breaks to ensure its continual growth and evolution.
But, for someone who’s going through a constant and condensed version of this, it feels … overwhelming.
For many, the twenties are the most uneducated, financially unstable, locationally dependent, imprisoned times in their lives. Only when their brain fully develops at 25 and their finances stabilize in their 30’s, 40’s, or even 50’s do they experience an unrestrained life, and some never get there.
I think people have claimed the twenties to be the “greatest time in your life” to coerce us to believe that it’s not as bad as it feels. Propaganda of the highest order.
There is, of course, beauty in building the life you want to live and in the journey of being young and naive. But overall, I HOPE this isn’t the greatest time in my life.
I guarantee that my twenties will be a balancing act between beauty and chaos and that I’ll look back on this time fondly, but it will for sure not be my greatest.
For those in their twenties feeling like they “should” be having more fun, more energy, more time, more happiness, more … life, just know that this is only the second or third decade in your 8 to 9-decade-filled life (if you’re lucky). You’re a baby expected to perform like an adult. You are valid for feeling the reality of your twenties and have time to grow, learn, and blossom. Trust that as the decades pass, you’ll only get better with time.
Believe in yourself. You will get through this decade. And hopefully, it’ll be filled with great friends, fun times, and excitement for your everyday life. Because if you choose to make your twenties something special, unique, and valuable, you might just look back and claim that these surprisingly were “the greatest times in your life” ... but most likely you won’t.
Thanks for reading :)
xoxo, Ayla
