It has to be proven somewhere that your twenties are the most stressful and confusing time of your life. So many problems and decisions are thrown at you to solve and choose. This at times gets super overwhelming and scary, but I'm here to tell you that everything is okay. It’s okay to be in your twenties and feel like your life is completely falling apart. It’s okay that you’re still struggling through your college courses and that sometimes you have to call your mom to cry about the week’s events. It’s perfectly fine that sometimes you just need to curl up in a ball and nap for a few hours. Your twenties is the time where you’re supposed to figure everything out, but where I’m standing right now figuring everything out seems very far out of reach. But at twenty-three, J.K Rowling was broke. Tina Fey was working at the Y.M.C.A. Oprah had just gotten fired from her first job as a TV reporter, and Walt Disney had declared bankruptcy.
You don’t have to be twenty-three and have your whole life figured out, quite frankly it should be messy. So maybe you’re working as a server and get to listen to people complain about how their food taste and stiff you on the tip. Maybe you’re struggling through your hardest class, and thoughts of your GPA make you nauseous. Maybe rent is due next week and you’re about one hundred bucks short. You have to remind yourself that nothing is as bad as it seems.
Your twenties are truly the last time you have to make as many mistakes as possible. Learn your lesson and build from that. Be selfish and care only about yourself and doing what is going to better yourself. Twenties is the only time it’s acceptable to go on a week vacation with your best friends and live off of cereal and Gatorade because you can’t afford anything else. It’s the only time it’s acceptable to spend a weekend forgetting about all of life’s responsibilities at a music festival listening to your favorite bands. It’s the only time you can dye your hair purple and convince all your friends to do it too. It’s the time you can stay up all night driving around town going nowhere and listening to your favorite songs on repeat.
Your twenties are meant for you to lose yourself, just to find yourself in a way you never have before. It’s about spending all your money to truly understand the value of a dollar. It’s about giving it all and failing just to learn something new. Where you are now does not define you, and is nothing short of what you will be someday.
So please don't think that you are falling behind or losing yourself simply because you're twenty-three and don't have your life put together. The pieces will eventually fall into place and all the craziness and messiness of your twenties with subside. So embrace the mess you're in now, because this is truly the only time in your life that you can.
