Having just turned 21 this past February, I feel like I just barely qualify for the label of “20-Something”, but like I qualify nonetheless. The notoriously angsty, indecisive, insecure, yet bright-eyed, limitless, and indomitable era of personal growth and self-discovery. 20-Somethings are due to inherit the Earth, heirs to society, warts and all. And as the Prince Williams of the world, there is a looming sense of responsibility and obligation. We are tomorrow’s superheroes although we were only just yesterday’s kids. Our 20's represent a highly complex intermediary stage in which we are preparing to take center-stage while still clinging to the lingering remnants of our childhoods. Such a dichotomy is the perfect environment for anxiety and apprehension to arise.
The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows (http://www.dictionaryofobscuresorrows.com) provides names to a comprehensive collection of all those peculiar and nuanced feelings that you could never quite put your finger on. However, given the plethora of emotional phenomena unique to your 20s, I thought it was about time that someone create a DSM of 20-Something Afflictions. Below is an abridged version, including conditions that you’ve felt but could never quite diagnose.
Monachopsis
The subtle but persistent feeling of being out of place.
Your 20's are an especially transitory period. You are simultaneously clinging to the final remains of your youth and being thrust into the adult world with all its accompanying expectations and duties. You possess the emotional, mental, and intellectual immaturity and inexperience of a child with all the expectations of behaving like an adult. You’re far too old for the playground but the office seems almost equally inappropriate. As a 20-Something, you are still forging your new mature identity and seeking an environment in which the new version of yourself can exist. Exploring this new territory can be uncomfortable, often leaving you feeling misunderstood, lost, or out of place.
Énouement
The bitter sweetness of having arrived in the future, seeing how things turn out, but not being able to tell your past self.
One of the greatest things about being in your 20's is knowing that you have made it out of your teenage years in one piece. Ideally, the completion of your teens and entry into your 2'0s means you’ve gained a more profound understanding of yourself and worked through at least some of the issues that plagued you in middle and high school. For me personally, high school was tough, to say the least. There were more than a few times that I was ready to throw in the towel and call it quits, too consumed with the agony of just existing. Somehow, I persevered and ended up where I am today. But it was not without a great deal of work and pain. Of course, a large part of me is quite proud of the progress I have made and the success that I have found on the other side of adversity. But a small part of me laments the fact that 16-year-old me had to endure such discomfort in order for present me to enjoy the fruits of her labor. I wish I had a time machine to go back in time and let her know that all will turn out for the best and to keep her chin up.
Mauerbauertraurigkeit
The inexplicable urge to push people away, even close friends who you
really like.
I think it’s safe to say that most of us know someone that went away to college or moved to a new city and subsequently adopted a completely new persona to match. Your 20's are a brand new chapter in your life, a clean slate upon which to concoct a new character. Some people, myself included, are such creatures of habit, that they will cling to their past personalities for dear life, like a security blanket of sorts. Others, however, desperately attempt to sever any ties to their past, instead opting for a fresh start. This means cutting ties with people, places, and things that you once loved. And this decision is not always easy. In fact, despite the apparent frigidness of such a gesture, it can be quite heart wrenching for the perpetrator as well. They may feel the need to create distance between themselves and their loved ones out of necessity for creating their new selves and not personal desire.
Ellipsism
A sadness that you’ll never be able to know how history will turn out.
An important distinction between the childhood that we are leaving in our 20s and the adulthood into which we are entering is the tangibility of our desires and aspirations. When we were young, nothing thrilled us quite like a shiny new toy, while a gift card we could truly do without. As children, we need something to hold, to see, to touch, and to possess physically. But with age, that necessity lessens. We understand the value of gift cards, savings bonds, stocks, investments; things we cannot see but trust are helping us in the long run. The same idea can be extended from monetary and material things to steps taken to improve the state of the Earth, such as recycling, eliminating pollution, protecting endangered species, etc. We cannot always immediately see the benefits of these efforts but we have to trust that they are constructive. If not for us, for our children and the generations that will follow. Moving from the childlike need to see in order to believe, this concept can take some getting used to. And truth is, we will never be able to foresee the distant future, and that is something that we need to learn how to accept.
Nodus Tollens
The realization that the plot of your life doesn’t make sense to you anymore.
Some of the more decisive of us grew up knowing exactly what we wanted to be when we grew up: firefighter, astronaut, doctor, soccer player. Even as we grew older and we adjusted our plans to accommodate reality, most of us had at least a loose plan for our lives. Coming into your 20's has a way of changing everything you thought you knew about yourself. Your circumstances and passions change and so must the direction of your life. I have countless friends who experienced a sense of Nodus Tollens around their sophomore year of college when they had to declare a major. The subject that once so interested them no longer seems appealing and isn’t something they want to devote the rest of their college careers to, much less the rest of their lives. This phenomenon occurs when you try to cling to a vision of your life that is no longer relevant to you and drag it into your present and future. Out of the context of your past, your old life plan doesn’t make sense and you need to reconstruct it for the here and now.
Onism
The frustration of being stuck in just one body, that inhabits only one place at a time.
Your 20's are some of the most exciting of your life. For many, it’s the first time you are living away from home, free to make your own decisions and pursue the fantasies that you’ve been dreaming up since you were just a kid. The freedom can be intoxicating. You feel like there’s not enough hours in a day to do everything you want to. I’ll stay up for days, engrossed in a project, just because I can. Because I feel like I want to do it all. I often wish there were three more of me to help the process along. I lament the fact that there is only one of me and I can’t simultaneously be traveling the world and finishing up college and working full time and hanging out with my friends. Like everyone else, my plate is pretty full, and having just one physical body sort of puts a damper on a lot of my plans at times.
Liberosis
The desire to care less about things.
One vestige of your childhood that proves to be particularly pesky in your 20's is your juvenile emotionality. You are a kid living in an adult’s body, reacting to mature situations in part like a child would. I would be lying if I said I wasn’t bothered by trivial things like an unreturned text or phone call or lack of acknowledgement from a boss or teacher for my work. I am very sensitive and emotional and passionate. And while this is both a blessing and a curse at times, it is something I have learned to love about myself. Although admittedly, adult life would be infinitely easier if I cared just a little bit less. In the words of the prolific rapper Kanye West: “I just want to feel liberated.”
Occhiolism
The awareness of the smallness of your perspective.
Another childhood illusion that is promptly crushed upon entering your 20's is the illusion of the largeness of your perspective. As a child, your world is relatively small and your own thoughts, ideas, and imagination takes up most of it. It is easy for a child to feel like the sun rises and sets on him. The 20-Something very quickly realizes, if they haven’t already learned in their teens, that their opinion is far less significant than they originally thought. They’re a tiny fish in an incomprehensibly massive ocean. It is a tough pill to swallow, but your 20s comes complete with the life lesson that the world doesn’t revolve around you.
Some of these feelings and afflictions may seem bleak and disheartening, but there is a cure. Time. With time, even the most angsty 20-Something matures and grows. While they may seem like nothing but obstacles, the aforementioned phenomena serve to help you evolve and take shape as humans in order to eventually become the fully-formed adults that your young selves would be proud to become.
All definitions from Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows (http://www.dictionaryofobscuresorrows.com)
