Before you read on, this is an opinion piece and is meant for entertainment purposes, aka it is littered with generalisations which will undoubtedly rattle a cage or two. So, before you continue, I highly recommend ingesting a grain of salt.
As you zig-zag through your teenage years you'll hear many an elderly person harp on and on about how the hardest part of your life is being a teenager. Well, it isn't. Trust me.
Sure, there are a few hormonal hurdles you have to clear, not to mention a couple of awkward and embarrassing social discrepancies you have to stagger away from; but the brutal reality is that as you
anxiously watch time tick forward, ever approaching the stroke of midnight, on the eve of your twentieth birthday, you slowly feel the electric-spark of youth fade away as you slip into a decade of overwhelming uncertainty, a much slowed down metabolism, a foggy future and the possibility that you might be alone. Forever.
In your twenties you're trapped in some sort time-flux between being a real grown up and being a petulant teen. Forced to embrace the worst of both worlds you're left feeling inadequate.
The adults greet your every thought and suggestion about your future with either a disapproving stare or a patronising tap on the shoulder. The teenagers, who merely glare at you with a degree of cynicism and pity, have pretty much written you off as a useless fossil. If you dare mutter the horrifying digits of your actual age to either group, whether it be during a grown up discussion or whilst giving sound advice to a youth, you get stared at like a car crash and will most definitely be verbally harassed. Okay, comic exaggeration, but you get the drift. Neither world wants us.
Being in your twenties is the very definition of social alienation. You're left to potter along by yourself, with the odd negative comment being tossed at you by relatives, whilst you try to get your affairs in order and deal with the sticky transition between being a kidulthood and adulthood.
First you have to decide what direction you're taking with your life. At least twice. Whether that be after your graduate and are trying to find a career/job that suits you, or start a family etc Either way, once these longstanding anxieties about your career have been quelled you get to move onto the future of your romantic life.
At any point during your twenties, most people go through a 'everything must go' emotional liquidation. I've not yet had mine yet, but I presume it'll play out something like the following: I'll remove every person that no longer has any use, or has ran out of battery, from my life and begin relentlessly hunting, ahem, I mean searching for my future partner. Obviously I need to remove all the junk and riffraff from my life to find myself a beau. There hasn't been room for him that's all. Either that or I'll line up pictures of my ex's with little pros and cons lists bellow their photos and decide that way.
Should you be fortunate enough to track down your real love, it's swiftly followed by the irksome, and dooming, question of 'when're you going to start a family.' I've had it before. I've bee accosted by a flock of nagging relatives bombarding me with pleas for a grandchild, nephew, niece. I was tempted to burst into 'Girls Just Want To Have Fun.' I don't want any waens until I can at least afford my phone bill regularly.
Without a doubt though, if you're in you twenties you're going to feel like this is your last chance to experiment, find love, explore and party. Personally I'm trying to cram all the above in whilst setting myself up for 'real life' which starts after your twenties (that's scientifically proven of course.)
Apparently though, and I've kissed enough middle-aged people to testify to this, restaurants, cafes and clubs continue to let people over 29 through their doors. They even serve them alcohol. So, hopefully that alleviates some of the stress.
At some point during your twenties, someone should appear with a memo that reads: "You're going to get old pretty soon and you will one day die. You may be cool for now, but get your affairs in order. Consider this your notice. Sincerely, Real Life."
