You promised yourself you would change coming into college and then again when graduating college. Maybe not a significant change, but an important enough change to alter certain areas of your life - work ethic, handling of negative situations, overall maturity, and dealing with people you find yourself attracted to.
You had fantasies of growing up, becoming an adult, and figuring everything out, including yourself. You look at the adults in your life and have this notion that they have their sh*t together, and one day, that'll be you.
You have a life plan: marriage by 25, kids by 27, career by 30. Switch and edit that around any number of ways, and you and everyone else you know has had this plan in mind at some point or another. Eventually, 20 comes around. People that you were friends with in high school, when you were a freshman and they were seniors, they're fast approaching 25 and so are you. You just broke up with your boyfriend or girlfriend, you've sworn off of men or women, you just had an awkward one night stand that made you forget what good sex is like. And to think, a few years ago, you thought you'd find the love of your life by 25 and your 21st birthday is coming up in a couple of months.
In six years, you're supposed to pop out a kid or two. You realize how difficult that will be when looking over your tuition bill and comparing it to last year's, noticing the few-thousand-dollar increase. You also imagine giving up those Wednesday nights when you suddenly decide to down a bottle of wine with friends and flirt with the bartender at your favorite bar. Those nights when you stay up until three in the morning, getting high and drinking to the point of vomiting, and waking up for work the next morning with a churning stomach and 20-pound head. You think about how a kid is gonna fit into all that.
You would have thought that by your early 20s, you would be capable of a normal, healthy relationship. You would understand the meaning of giving space and learn to deal with jealousy in a constructive manner. You would deal with issues through respectful and calm communication and not screaming matches. You would take rejection or a breakup with poise and dignity, or you would know where to draw the line when your partner continues to push your buttons.
You realize graduation is fast approaching, and you still have no idea what to say when people ask what you're going to do with your degree. You come up with a bullsh*t response, something about taking a few years going through odd-jobs, perhaps moving out of mom's apartment, perhaps going to grad school in a few years but not right now. What you really mean is, you have no idea what your passions are, how your hobbies of watching TV and reading Stephen King novels can possibly benefit others and/or make you money. What you really mean is, please stop asking these banal questions and allow you to shirk any and all responsibilities post-graduation.
By your early 20s, you finally realize how much you don't understand, and how lost you still are. You understand that five, even ten years isn't going to change that. There's not going to be a point in your life where everything will click and you'll suddenly realize how to be an adult. But once you stop giving yourself unreasonable deadlines for your future, you'll approach adulthood in a way that feels a little more natural. But just so you know, it's always going to be terrifying.
