Help, My Twenties Are Killing Me

As time goes by, it dawns heavily on me that I am no longer a child. Your twenties are a very awkward phase of your life.

I like to think of it as the childhood of adulthood.

At that stage, you are definitely not a child. However, you don’t really have all it takes to be described as an adult. More often than not, this juncture of life finds us adrift on a tattered raft amongst the turbulent waters of life, and confused as hell. You have been a teenager and someone’s child all your life that defining yourself as anything other than that seems intimidating and overwhelming.

Some nights as I lay staring at the ceiling in the dark embrace of my room, like dementors, the reality that I don’t have my life at all together haunts me. My life reminds me a bit of a male college dorm: cramped with garish posters of future goals on the wall, ideas strewn all over the place like clothes and desolation presiding humidly over everything. Sure, the room cleans up nicely. But that doesn’t excuse the fact that there is really no method to this madness.

Isolation is a survival tactic I learned as a teenager and perfected in my twenties. I have learned to avoid malls, markets, and anywhere I might see old friends, classmates, or extended family members. I treat shopping like delivering ammunition across a field filled with landmines.

Get in.

Zig when necessary.

Zag at other times and get the hell out.

That’s the only way I can avoid well-meaning questions like “What are you doing now?”, “How’s life treating you?” or “Hope there is someone in the picture?”

Admitting my life is unraveling at the seams feels a lot like failure- truthful failure, but failure nonetheless. On social media and my contact list, I see young people in their early, mid and late twenties doing exploits in their different fields and consistently proving that youth can be…