Why I’m Not Excited To Enter My Twenties

In 110 days I turn 20 years old. I am terrified. When I turned 18 I knew everything I was sure of everything. The way things worked out made sense. I was on track for a difficult year, but I knew the hope and the path that lies ahead. Now almost two years later I feel more lost than ever. I know what I want, but what feasible plan do I have to go there? None. There’s no plan.

There’s no plan, and not in a sexy Hozier, let’s see where the night will take us kinda way. I want to move to Europe or to New York. I want to fall in love and dance the nights away. I want to get my degree and get two more after that. I want it all. I want everything the world has to offer. I know the world is not fair. I have lived in an unfair world. I have lived in homes that are on fire. I have lived in homes where you cannot breathe. I left these homes running where ever the wind will take me. I have gone where the coast has led.

How much more running will I have to do? How much longer do I put off facing myself? “I’ll stare directly at the sun, but never in the mirror,” seems like the best allegory for what i’ve hear one’s twenties are supposed to be. But choosing myself and putting my wants and needs over others was beaten out me too long ago. How do I know what I want? How do I know that what I want is what I’m meant to do?

My parents and their parents and their parents lived a million lifetimes in their 70, 80, 90 years on earth, but i wonder how many of these lives they regret? How do I live life without them? Even as I sit here writing these words I can’t help but cringe at I, I, I. 8 Billion people on this planet and I think my struggles are the worst? I think my story is the most important? Then the cycle continues because my story is important just as the other 8 billion are. Why do we have to live on this scale of constant cautioning around others. Full statements can exist without taking away from others. I matter and I’m important and I’m confused and going crazy. Those statements don’t detract from anyone else’s life or their perspective.

Perhaps it worries me that the next ten years will come and go and the decade after that will pass me by and I will never have taken enough agency in my life to steer my ship to the right path. If there even is a right path. Will I chase the fortune and fame against the small simple life I am destined for or will I settle for the simple life when the fortune and fame is what the universe had planned for me?

Every thing is fig tree and every step rots a fruit. Every choice another blooms. I am not a girl, not yet a woman. I live in a limbo of child and adult. Am I arrested development? I am owed nothing and everything! The world is my oyster, but don’t take up too much space or time deciding what you want. Don’t fall for an older lover or a younger lover. Don’t get married, don’t have children but you must marry and have children. Your legacy is not yourself and what you leave behind. You owe all you are to everyone, but never let anyone in never let anyone know all you are.

Who am I if not exploited? Who am I if not over exposed? Who am I if not selling every part of myself in order to get a little attention? Who are you when the world is not looking, but also you live with a man inside your brain telling you how to act and think and be. I’m grateful, all the time! I’m precious and i’m kind! I’m pretty when I cry! My suffering is beautiful and tragic and that’s why you care! When I die only share photos of when I was young and beautiful.

Forget me when my beauty fades forget me when you find a new shiny toy to play on with. Love me for everything you want me to be hate me when i’m not. Is it better to speak or to die, I am female either choice I make condemns me.

The world is so loud and it pushes me to scream. To shout and to rage about in fury. I am not an angry man. I do not need aggression to function. I am soft and sweet. I am round and well mannered. No one likes me, but everyone loves me. Why do I exist in all the multitudes. Why is being human so difficult. Why am I so soft. Why do I let the world craze and desolate me.

I am not excited to enter my twenties because at the end of the decade these a questions I’ll want the answers to and I’m terrified I won’t have them. I’m terrified that I’ll have wasted the best years of my life. Whatever the fuck that means.