I started off my second decade with a purge.
I swiftly discarded of and donated anything I deemed too childish. The princess pink cottony blanket that once donned my bed was switched out for a more sophisticated grey fleece with satin trim. The Winnie the Pooh piggy bank of my childhood was relegated to a bottom shelf somewhere, in exchange for a scented candle. The John Green and Rainbow Rowell novels of my early teenage years now belong to some other "young adult."
And here I am, planted firmly between 19, the marked point of no return, and 21, the age at which everyone suddenly expects you to have it together, simply because at long last you're old enough to order a drink. This system, arbitrary indeed, has held up, and twenty is the critical turning point where we must relinquish the comforts of youth and free-fall into the culture of being a "twenty-something."
I always imagined twenty to be a little more Sunday brunch and a little less Star Wars marathon. I thought by now I'd be seamlessly juggling my college classes, an entry-level job in my field, friends, and family, and a trodden path to success.
But instead, I am still working minimum-wage retail. I am too tired for much of a social life. I know the brand of success I want, but I'm not really sure how to get it. I only have a year and a half left of my undergraduate career. Only a year and a half to finish strong, apply to graduate school, get accepted to graduate school, etc...
The thought of that chills me. It's like my body is physically rejecting the notion that I'm running out of time.
So I remind myself that I'm not. A high school sophomore has a year and a half until they graduate and go off to college. I for one wasn't thinking of college at all yet as a sophomore. In that next year and a half, leading up to my high school graduation, I figured everything out.
And I tell myself that I'll figure everything out again.
Because that's what twenty is for. Twenty is for collecting what you've learned in your teens, compartmentalizing it in ways that push you forward. Twenty is about leaving the safety of your boundaries and finding new ways to excel. Twenty isn't about the success itself. It's about the figuring out how you'll get there.
A friend once described twenty as being "a duckling tossed into the ocean," and while humorous, I think this description is pretty apt. We're getting our bearing, learning our surroundings, and trying to take in the sheer amount of world that surrounds us. We're learning how to keep our heads above the water and stay afloat.
