I turn 25 in two weeks.
The weight of that statement…
I turn 25 in two weeks.
That absolutely terrifies me.
I know that sounds crazy, but humor me, here.
My current job, the city I live in, my lack of a love life, battling depression and debt and parents who have no idea what I’m going through, all roll into the “celebration” of a life that’s somehow managed to last a quarter of a century. This, in a nutshell, is the Quarter Life Crisis, kids. And yes, my loves, it is a very real thing.
I think there are few benchmarks in life so significant as your twenties, and I think this time in life is so devastatingly underplayed. When I entered my twenties I had a vague outline of a five-year plan (since part of being in college is attempting to figure your shit out.) And aside from dying to turn 21, my goals included figuring out my dream career, finding a degree to prepare me for that career, graduating, and then making it happen. Because that’s what Smith’s do. (My last name is Smith, btw.)
As a twenty-year-old you don’t really understand how much your life will change in five years. At 20 I would never have imagined that in the next five years I would have been utterly destroyed by not one, not two, but three guys, stuck in the same dead-end city, nowhere close to my dream career, and feeling a little more insane by the day. A mere five years stand between me and my bright-eyed sophomore self posted up in the student center, headphones over her snapback, pencil to paper, people watching and laughing to herself at how successful she was going to be one day, if only they knew.
And now I sit here, reflecting over the last half-decade wondering what I actually have to show for myself. I sit here, feeling dreadfully old, ridiculously under accomplished, and totally alone. I sit here, no heart left, accumulating debt, and wondering how I’m ever going to get out of this mess I somehow ended up in. I used to know where I was going. I used to know what I wanted. And now I am more unsure than ever, on every level. I feel like I have no idea who I am anymore.
All of this anxiety, self-doubt, depression, and lack of direction, culminated by the approach of my 25th birthday. You know, if it weren’t such a self-imposed benchmark on myself, maybe I wouldn’t be placing as much significance on the date itself. Because to be honest, the date is only forcing me to realize how disappointing my timeline of life events has been up to this point. As I said before, I think this time in life is devastatingly underplayed.
I can pinpoint the sentiments of my Quarter Life Crisis to three things: my love life, my location, and my inability to conquer self. These three separate and yet interrelated life values have had the most significant impact on my short existence overall, and are direct contributors to my current state of disarray. These are the three things that will kill me in the end, if I can’t overcome them, so I may as well let you in on the secret now. The only way to overcome the Quarter Life Crisis is to dismantle it for every little foundation-shaking piece it pretends to be. To expose it for the ridiculousness that it is. To overcome the Quarter Life Crisis, I’m going to take you deep into the painful, imperfect, and at times humorous belly of the beast…my beast, that is.
Welcome to my Quarter Life Crisis, kids.
Let’s dive in.
♡ A Wild Mess
Confessions of a Wild Mess 