Being Twenty Something

I remember how, back in highschool everything seemed possible.
You'd meet a guy who was decently good looking and not idiotic whose world view sort of matched yours and you'd find out he thought you were decently good looking and not idiotic ad you'd wonder if maybe just maybe you'd fallen in love. I mean you were aware that you didn't know what love was, but it seemed possible that you could find out. And people would make a big deal out of it before you were even sure you knew what was happening, but you didn't care, so you went along with it. Everything was an adventure and when you realised your stupidity you shrugged it off as a lesson learned. Ok, so that's not what love is, we will figure it out someday.

School was stressful, but mostly because it seemed way more important than it really was. It felt kind of nice to be doing something so important. You felt like your nineties meant that the world was your oyster and you could do anything you wanted to.

And speaking of what you wanted to do, you never really freaked out too much about graduation. It wasn't so much that you didn't know what you wanted to do. You did. You wanted to change the world, you just didn't know how, but you had new ideas everyday.

Sure you had problems. Every little end of a friendship or death of a family member became a tragedy. Everything was a tragedy and you were the star of the show. Sure it was a sad show but it felt nice to be important (at least in your mind) you hadn't yet become ashamed of your sorrows, you hadn't yet learned the greater drama of life of which you would be lucky to be considered an extra (a face in the crowd).

Then graduation came and you were slightly apprehensive (for dramatic effect) but mostly excited. Unfortunately, your dreams didn't come true. You didn't get a part time job, you didn't save up to travel the country, you didn't become a famous author of books that would move people's hearts and enlighten their minds. You became a nobody special: another stupid fool who studied a useless degree at a useless university, even though you had vowed in highschool to be a rebel, to beat the system, and never be a lemming.

Sure you met interesting people and had cool experiences and you sure learned a lot, but that just made it worse. You learned how messed up the universe is and how a lot of it is your fault (or the fault of your ancestors). You learned that in the grand scheme of things your problems don't matter. You became ashamed. You felt bad for the mess the world is in. You felt bad for your first world problems.

The worst thing yet is you lost your sense of possibility. You started thinking "If I haven't fallen in love yet, it will probably never happen." and "if I can't understand love with my mind it probably isn't real." You learned fancy new words to express yourself like "it's probably a social construct" but these phrases felt empty and you abandoned them because the last thing you ever wanted to be was a lady in a dark suit giving the bad news to the next generation: "This world is fucked (except you'd say it more fancy) and there is nothing you can do because you can't even understand it because you are stupid and everything is beyond you" Because after all, that is every lecture in a nut shell.

So what do you want to do when you get out of this place? Something to justify coming here but you have no idea what and this fact scares you shitless. Sometimes you'll just be brushing your teeth and you will look in the mirror and think "I don't know what I'm doing here" and you wish you didn't love so many people because then you could just shoot yourself and that would be the easiest escape in the world.

You still want to change the world, but the problem is bigger than that you don't know how. Now you don't know if it is possible.

You feel sad about that, and guilty that this idea is making you apathetic. You feel guilty for the days you don't want to get out of bed.

But you know deep down in your heart that you are probably remembering your younger days with rose coloured glasses. You were just as sad then as you are now, but you are also just as happy. It is not every day that you feel this way, it just feels like a lot when you're in the middle.

The worst problem on your plate right now is you're an average Canadian twenty something with a lot of passion, some knowledge, no wisdom, and no idea what you should do.

You remember that thousands before you have made it through worse. You know your dad was a homeless alcoholic, but he came through the other side and you will too.

You feel stupid and embarrassed for being twenty something and so sad and confused but you know there is an uncomfortable beauty to all of this and you hope that someday you will grow wiser and it will be a lesson to teach you. You hope you will never shake your head at the young and the foolish, because we've all been there. And all you really want to do is open up your arms and hug the broken, and you'll find a way to do it too if you just give it time.

And by you I mean me, but maybe I'm not the only one.