Being in your twenties is a confusing time. Shouldn’t you have your shit together by now? Shouldn’t you have your foot on the career ladder you always hoped for? Or, should you still be taking advantage of the real lack of responsibility and keep necking tequilas every Friday night? It’s an age where we’re considered adult enough to work full-time jobs and pay rent, where it’s totally acceptable to get married and have babies. Yet at the same time, amidst our so-called maturity and independence, we often find ourselves drinking ourselves into oblivion, living off super-noodles and not quite understanding what a mortgage really involves. It’s a real limbo, and not the good ‘how low can you go’ kind.
Half the women my age are home-owners, engaged or married, and have babies popping out left right and centre, the other half are still drunk snapping on the reg and tinder swiping their lives away. What is acceptable is completely tenfold, and because there are no rules set out for us, it makes it very confusing when we ask ourselves, where should I be and what should I be doing? One thing is clear: we’re searching for answers on how to make sense of this messy life we’re leading and the pressure we put on ourselves to have our shit together is almost tangible. Major alarm bells ringing if, like me, you couldn't be more single, you're in a job that isn't the ultimate career goal, and you literally have minus figures in your savings account (I don't think that's even possible but I'm fairly sure I've managed it).
On the flip-side though, isn’t the beauty of your twenties just that? That you can choose either Option A; to be settled playing house, or Option B; to have everything about your life still up in the air. Either option counts because there are no real boundaries to adhere to and there isn’t a manual or omnipotent presence telling us we should have achieved X by Y and how to go about doing it (but seriously, please someone invent this so I know if what I’m doing is right). Do you just fancy drinking a cup of tea with your husband to be? Do it. Do you wanna go and see how many guy’s numbers you can get in one night? ME TOO. Either scenario is totally acceptable and reminding yourself of that once in a while won’t go a miss. I for one might be living in New York, but the room I live in is literally so small I can’t stand in it in heels without hitting my head on the ceiling, I have to scrape quarters together just to buy a coffee and I’m definitely not working my dream job. I 100% do not have my shit together, but if this is the life path that’s been set out for me, I’m still gonna work it (or at least when I’m not in bed watching Grey’s Anatomy, anyway). Your twenties are for learning and your thirties are for earning, am I right?
Don’t get bogged down by those boundaries of identity, or what is or isn't acceptable at this age. For now, you can be anyone you want to be, and you can settle into the one role that works for you when the time is right. If you haven’t found that role by now, that isn’t a reflection on you as a human being. A lot of people are in a hurry to get to where they want to be, whether that be established or in love, and I for one am entirely guilty of this. Yet if anything, now is the time to marvel in the opportunity to identify with different things, experiment in every way possible and use that experimentation to figure out what you’re not willing to tolerate. After all, there really is no point being in a rush to be who you are going to be if you’re not currently enjoying being who you are.
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