The Beginning of the End...Of My 20s

You know how sometimes you’re encouraged to consider life in perspective? For example, whenever life gets you down people will mention that you live in New York City and you have loving friends and family but there are people all over the world starving, suppressed, and far worse off than you are right now. So perk up! That’s completely legitimate. Helpful even, at times. But it doesn’t really get to the root of the problem you’re having. It doesn’t make your life better it just makes your life seem better in comparison to, well, complete and utter tragedy. As far as I’m concerned, if you get to the point where you need to start weighing your life against the lives of those who are forced to face a living hell every day then you probably do have something to worry about.

I try not to compare. It doesn’t seem fair to either of us.

I’m currently a little low. This happens. It’s not a cry for help or a need for any kind of reassurance (In fact, it makes sense that these moments come out in this medium because I write when I feel strongly about something and the writing of it usually helps immensely because all I want, all anyone really wants, is for other people to know me and I write my feelings and thoughts much better than I say them). I know what my life looks like right now – what’s good, what’s bad, what needs improvement, and what should make me proud. I know how much I weigh and the length and color of my hair. I’m pretty familiar with me. I’m just a little low.

What I’m worried about is balancing. Balancing all the important aspects of A Life. The type of life I think I’m supposed to have and the type of life I want. It’s not very harmonious currently and I’m not entirely sure what to do about it. I could blame grad school and rightly so as it consumes so many of my waking hours. However, I’m 29 years old and I’ve never had a real job, never been in a serious romantic relationship, and still couldn’t tell you with any kind of certainty where I’ll be in two years let alone five. There’s more than grad school to blame here. 

I could try blaming my parents. That something in the raising of me went horribly wrong and now I can’t grow up. But that’s not fair either because I think being a “grown-up” means that you are responsible, respectful, kind, generous, honest, and goal-oriented with meaningful relationships and an ability to see yourself for who you are and continue to make changes – all things my parents raised me to be and believe in. 

I don’t know what it is. I’ve made great strides to overcome my shyness and I’m doing fabulously. I talk to lots of people (even initiate conversation!), I make friends (albeit slowly), I can take the lead, input my opinions, laugh and play and get serious and be real. However, what I’ve noticed is that people my age or older tend to intimidate me. I spent most of my life with friends my age and we get along just fine. My best friend doesn’t intimidate me of course and we’re only months apart in age. However, in the Peace Corps most of my friends were a few years younger. Here, in graduate school, many students are a few years younger. I feel a connection to them because we are at similar places in our lives, however, the strides I need to be making socially are the types of strides that put me in contact with people my age. I need to be able to relate to someone on the same level in more substantial ways. That is currently hard to find and I’m struggling. 

Here I am again, grappling to find a conclusion for this post. Probably because there is no conclusion. I have no bright ideas or epiphanies as to how I should tackle this problem. I won’t compare myself to any of the women in Half the Sky because that would only serve to disrespect their heroism. In fact, I’m sure they’d have great advice for me. They’d probably say something like Get over it already! Jeez! Or maybe not. Maybe we’d strategize a plan to get me feeling more like a consonant adult. Then I’ll do that plan, it’ll work, I’ll write a book about it, and become a multi-millionaire, helping other late-20-somethings like myself! Perfect. 

-Age