I mentioned to my Mum at some point in 2023 the idea that I might be experiencing a "quarter life crisis", being 18 at the time. My mum (shoutout Mum) said that I wasn't at the quarter stage of my life yet, so I couldn't really be having this kind of crisis. Barring a climate-related apocalypse before that point, which I am nowhere near intelligent enough to write about, I think she had a point there.
I then followed this up with a conversation with my sister and her partner more recently, as I thought that at almost 20, that seems closer to the quarter stage. I was happy to be reminded that actually, given I live in Britain, that wouldn't be aiming very high, and I'm reasonably healthy right now as well. Some, as we'll see later in the article, consider the quarterpoint of their life to be 23-25. Perhaps aspirational. But also, I think the idea of a quarter life crisis is something mostly to do with struggling to find your identity, looking for what will bring you a good career and financial security, trying to be a good person and, all while doing this, trying to have fun and make memories and have a time that will be nostalgic in the future.
What defines the "crisis" - though in my case, it's mostly just me thinking a lot - I think, is feeling a little to a lot overwhelmed about all of the aforementioned stuff, and more. The pressure is not that things are necessarily much harder than the rest of your life, in fact, things are easier now than in many other parts of your life, but the fact that you know that right now things are supposed to be so great means that there is a crushing pressure on young people to make things great. Furthermore, there's a sense of failure if you aren't doing amazing inspiring things, or even just fun things. The fact is, I really believe it's okay to just get through your life at this point because even if you have a good life it's hard to always maintain good mental health. But as I'll get into later, we're all a bit harsher on ourselves than we are on others we might give this advice to.
Now, this article isn't meant to say "oh look at the poor little young person, turning 20, about to enter the prime of their life". No, I understand how lucky I am to be at this stage of life, in fact this is part of the reason I experience this quarter life crisis. I know how fast it's going to go. I have a tendency to imagine myself later in life not necessarily filled with regret, but with a sort of "oh...wish I'd done that, or oh this was the best time in my life, I wish I had those days back". Would I say this has been the best time in my life? No, but I've definitely been happier more often in my second year of uni than my first. More to come on that from my review of this year.
I suppose, even though this article will cover the general feelings of anxiety and imposter syndrome present in young people nowadays, 20 has always felt like something of a milestone to me. (Stick with me guys, I have many friends who are already older than this and I love you all and you should not feel old.) I think when I was a kid I remember this hazy conversation, I must've been around 6 at the time. I suggested that 18, despite being the legal age for an adult in the UK, wasn't really an age where you actually feel grown up, but 20 seemed like it to me, yes 20 was the age I could call my sweet little self a man.(Disclaimer: I was a really fun kid and I was definitely not at all thought of as odd.)
That doesn't mean I think that we should change the legal age of adulthood, by the way. Some young people show remarkable maturity, and I think there's something to be said for the categorisation of us as "young adults". Labour's advocating 16-17 year olds' voting rights in advance of the July 4 general election, for example, something I was more passionate about in 2017, when the next general election was scheduled for when I would be almost exactly 17 years and 11 months old. But that's a tangent, and those were simpler times, though I doubt anyone would have thought as much at the time.
Also, America, change your laws - I use this example because I lived there not because they're the only ones who do this. The fact that you can be married, have children, buy a house, serve in the army, all before you're able to take a sip of beer, bemusing to me. Where was I, I've fallen down the rabbit hole.
Well, whether or not the prediction of young me has had this subconscious impact on old (sorry, I mean present) me, for some reason I think I still feel similarly about turning 20. Maybe it isn't the age someone officially becomes an adult - I don't think this age exists - but it certainly sounds like an adult. You're in your third decade of life (*shudder* that sounded horrible), you're out of your teenage years associated with fun and youth and stuff. Of course, your twenties are associated with this stuff as well, at least your early twenties. But twenties are also when people start getting into serious relationships, jobs, and for most the first time in your life where you're not within the safety net of academia. Don't even get me started on your thirties. But yeah, at 20 I feel myself creeping closer towards adult life, where I can't really call myself a kid anymore.
In Lorde's 2015 song 'Perfect Places', she sings "I'm 19 and I'm on fire". Well, I'm still 19, and erm...am I on fire?? Because sure, I have great experiences, but are you telling me this stage of my life where the most entertaining nights depend on which drinks you're having, where I'm uncertain about my desired career path, where I'm single and haven't really experienced romance yet, I am "on fire", slaying, living my best life?? So I had a bit of a crisis about this, which I told my mum about as well when we were listening to that song in the car. Not only am I about to be not 19 anymore, Lorde wrote that song when she was 19, yet I have never published a song I've written (or written anything more than lyrics, to tell the total truth). I see more and more people l younger than me gaining success. Hell, whenever I hear about a teenage footballer I feel thoroughly depressed. And the first time I felt this kind of imposter syndrome was when Coco Gauff, 4 months older than me, starred in Wimbledon at age 15. So it's not a new phenomenon either agggggggggggggghhhh.
I think the idea with what Lorde was trying to say there - if I can speculate like the English student I am at heart - is that despite the uncertainty, at 19 you are young, you don't have to have things figured out, be full of energy and do things that are spontaneous and have fun. Because, really, that's the main goal in life right now. But I have anxiety, and I overthink, so I tend to worry about the future. I suppose everyone does to an extent, but I think that people will glamourise this stage of life because of how far away the future typical 9-5 workplace seems, so we go to clubs and see our friends and spend money carelessly because it's all part of the university experience, and we don't really worry about it because we're still just babies in the grand scheme of life.
And this sounds like I'm saying this is a bad thing. In fact, I think it's such a beautiful thing in life to be able to have the times where you forget about the everyday worries - or the more serious ones - and just have a nice time guiltlessly. The opportunity to do this isn't available for everyone, so people who do have it - even if you're not at university - should make the best of it. But I think my personal gripe with this is just that I can't always put the guilt out of my mind. I worry about the future consequences before they happen - such an inconvenience! If I could snap my fingers and do it, I'd try to tell myself to enjoy life to its fullest, at least bit more. I pretty much constantly have stuff to look forward to but the thought of these experiences is a happy one before it happens, and a "oh I'm sad this ended" after it happens, at least if it goes well.
Another lyric I like is by an artist pretty much none of you will know, her name's Taylor Bickett, in her song 'I Like Mondays'. Taylor Bickett also has a song called 'Quarter Life Crisis', from which the title of this article partly derives.
"I rush the future, I cling to the past, I'm terrified the present will not last...I see the irony, I get the fact it's already gone, by the time that the thought has passed."
Yep, that's me. That's why I journal, I try hard to just remember things so they haven't gone to waste. But ironically, the things that are in fact the most memorable are obviously the ones I'm least likely to forget, so there's probably no need to journal those down to remember them. Incidentally, one of my closest friends has told me to talk about this stuff in therapy multiple times, which is an excellent idea but also less available at this stage of my life, because UoB doesn't do enough of it, and paid therapy requires money.
I feel like the general advice given to university students and people in their 20s is well-meaning, but in my case it leaves my head feeling frazzled. It's on the one hand "make the most of your life!!!! Go out and have the best time!!" And on the other, it's "it's okay if you have a bad day, sometimes just getting through it is enough". So...which is it? How low energy or mood do I have to have for just getting through the day to be an achievement? I understand both pieces of advice, especially the second one. A variety of factors means mental health crises are a bordeline hallmark of our generation, so sometimes it's good to be told that you're doing great even if you don't feel like you are. On the other hand, you don't want to be missing out on any great experiences either, you're only this age once so whatever you want to do you should do (finances, friends in different places and other things can prevent this). What's the solution, I hear you ask? A happy medium. Try your best to thrive, accept that some days just aren't gonna be it. I think that's solid advice.
However, I can't help but think that happy mediums are what define my life, I look at things with almost too balanced a perspective. I question how strong my opinions are about most things because I often make the dangerous assumption that the opposite opinion has just as much credence if I looked at the evidence closely enough. This isn't the case for everything - I know who I'm voting for, for example, on basic moral principle (those who know me well will know who this is). But that's another thing - we can vote now!! I don't feel responsible enough to do that, but I did in local elections and I will do for the general election.
I think one of the things that worries me, to get overly deep, is the idea that as I get older, I can't blame things on how young I am anymore. Perhaps I can blame things on my anxiety, or anything else I happen to be diagnosed with in the future, but at what point does that stop mattering? * How old do I have to be, and am I going to allow myself to say "I'm only human, it happens". I think the combination of having anxiety disorder and simultaneously being forgetful and something of a massive klutz and a total perfectionist may not be entirely a brilliant one.
*Also, I’m trying to destigmatise that attitude of disorders being an excuse.
One of my biggest fears in life is accidentally saying something awful to my friends, accidentally revealing my "true colours"; i.e. that I secretly, unknowingly, have a terrible personality and I act terribly around people. This, if you've met me, is why I apologise a lot for mostly nothing. Sometimes, I've found that actually I am capable of being a massive arsehole, reaffirming the idea that I need to constantly apologise for things. Mostly, I think, I'm not. But for some reason in my mind I never measure up to others in how interesting, polite, kind, empathetic, funny, attractive or whatever I am, even though if others came to me with the same fears I did I would treat them kinder.
There's this Instagram post I saw a while ago that I liked, where it was like "if you were someone else, would you be able to treat yourself as harshly?" That's a poor recollection of it, but the sentiment is true: I wouldn't. For some reason I find it much easier to be kind to others than to myself. I'm always looking to learn to treat myself better and all, but it's unclear if this'll change as I get older.
In counselling I discuss the way my brain processes things, and how something can be logically justified in my head but not be a healthy outlook on life. In the opposite sense, I can absorb things that will be good for my mental health, but cannot always apply them -but sometimes this is genuinely just because I forget. Again, trying to improve as I get older.
You might be asking yourself, because I know the fact I'm blunt to a fault makes this happen sometimes, "is this a cry for help?" No, actually. Writing this stuff makes me feel a lot better by being able to put it into words. But I think these are also generational issues, that teens and 20-somethings and 30-somethings especially can relate to: perfectionism, social anxiety, the idea that no matter what you find it hard to really be proud of yourself.
I would argue social media is perhaps the cause of a lot of this, as people show their glamorous sides on social media rather than the times when they aren't doing as well. Like, even if it's a post about something serious, or a more relatable post about mental health, it is curated to appear a certain way, and almost 100% of the time it is to make oneself look as good as possible (my media teacher in sixth form would be so proud of me right now).
On the other hand, social media's also kind of led me to most of my best friends?? It's weird, I think I put it down to Snapchat and Instagram being platforms where you sort of follow most people you know, rather than just your close friends. So you can sort of interact without having to do the awkwardly intimate thing of exchanging phone numbers, even if it's just liking a post or story or whatever. But yeah, if it weren't for social media I do question how I would've reached out to those who are now my closest friends.
*I'm also promoting this blog post on social media, but I say this as an afterthought as I don't think I'm being hypocritical critiquing social media whilst being an avid user of it. Avid user...more like addict. But hey, aren't we all? Sigh... moving on.
So I'm literally a month away from turning 20 as I write this. You can see my other article where I talked to a writer who discussed the grief she felt with turning 18, but I think when I turned 18 it was less a scary thing because I was becoming a legal adult, and more scary because I knew I was heading to university in a couple months.
20 just feels...different. I'm genuinely unsure why, but maybe it being a new decade in my life is a big thing for me. For example, on New Year's Day of 2020 I remember hugging a friend at the party I was at, and saying "hey, it's a new decade! It's 2020!" I was positive it would be a great year. Spoiler alert: it was not. I say spoiler alert as a joke, but this is something I've genuinely thought about - were there people living extremely rural and distant lives who just did not hear about COVID?? Tangent again, sorry.
This is supposed to be a really great decade in our lives, but I'm actually not expecting it to be. And not in a bad way, in that I'm expecting it to be shit or anything, I'm just keeping my expectations low because I know everyone thinks their 20s are gonna be incredible. For some this comes true, for others it couldn't be further from the truth. Let's look at an example.
If I had a nickel for every time a minor celebrity named Taylor released something successful entitled 'Quarter Life Crisis', I'd have two nickels, which is not a lot but it's weird it happened twice. Yeah, I know, another famous Taylor. Fact is I am a basic bitch who's favourite comedian, artist, author and another beloved artist share the same relatively basic name. Sigh...moving on.
Taylor Tomlinson, at 25, said people say they miss their twenties because they miss a time in their life where no one expected anything of them.
"But do you remember why no one expected anything of you?? Because you SUCKED! You were garbage, thinner garbage, but you were garbage. That's why people are stupid in their twenties, they don't have a gut to listen to yet."
Call it mean if you like, this makes me cackle. I think the reason 20s are seen as an awesome decade, along with the lack of responsibility and the fact you're probably at your most physically attractive. is that they're seen as the "high" point in your life, where you can be more spontaneous. As people get into their thirties, their careers, families, marriages, houses, bills, etc, kind of get in the way of this. And I mean, that’s if you’re lucky. In your twenties, you're probably out of your awkward teenage phase with too much acne and angst, but before you're settled down. I understand why that's an exciting prospect.
The problem for me and a countless number of others is I'm afraid to be spontaneous. I have anxiety! I may be an old soul but that's kinda okay. And don't get me wrong, I like the fact I can just go out with friends who are nearby and not have to wait ages to hang out with them now. But the boring domestic life people are afraid of....um, it kinda sounds a lot more like my speed.
Truthfully, I actually really like where I am right now. At this stage, I'm mixing self care with a healthy dosage of exciting stuff, and I think I'm pretty good at it. I'm not saying my life is perfect; again, I'm anxious frequently about very small things, I don't have a partner, I doubt myself a lot, etc.
But shit's about to get real. I'm gonna go into final year where the academic stakes are higher than ever, and then it's real life time. Right now feels like a good balance between important enough that I keep to my routines but don't worry too much about completely screwing up my life, because truthfully I just don't think I am.
And in the biggest twist no one could ever have seen coming, I will have to come to terms with growing up. Or, being grown up. Or, whatever kind of weird kid-adult hybrid I am now. I simultaneously feel wise but immature, but I suppose I always have. So what was the point of this? Just to talk about how I'm feeling about turning 20 and hopefully I'll look back on this and feel like "hey, it turned out okay". It's such a unique time in my life and I wanted to write about it, which is fun because I have a blog! :)
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