Something About Being Twenty

People tell you two things when you're in your twenties.

-These are the best years of your life

- What are you going to do with your life, you lazy piece of shit

Granted, that last bit might have been a creative flourish that all young people add when asked that question for the fifth time over a holiday break.

I am currently newly twenty. Not so much responsibility that it feels crippling yet, but I sense that coming soon. All the adults in my life almost seem envious of this period I am in, which does not ease my mind about the next thirty or so years when I may conceivably retire.

Maybe it was different when they were young, I guess they weren't worried about climate change, the declining economy, and the general state of the world while making your life look like a dream on social media.

But I can't help but wonder if it would be better back then. If it actually was, despite all the obvious disadvantages and tensions, a better time.

Or maybe they just want to be young again, not travel back in time. Aside from the joint pain I'll get, I don't think it will be that bad.

I can trade self-doubt and anxiety for stability.

My one-bedroom that I can barely afford for a house with a garden if I do well.

Ever-changing characters and people in my life, with questionable personalities, and unnecessary drama; for people who are always there, people who are calm, people who care.

I could afford to talk to someone about the ugly things in my brain and go on trips to sunny places and rainy places, and buy coffee in little cafes on cobbled streets.

I could fly across oceans.

I could build houses.

I could help people, and myself.

I could dance, drink, and love.

But I guess I could also forget to do all those things.

Maybe what makes every adult tell me how great this time is, is only because they forgot to keep doing the things that they dreamt about.

Maybe it's less about the youth I have to seize or the time that's slipping away; and more about remembering what it was that made this time great.

I might still forget. I could see that happening.

I might even change and look back on this time as good simply because it was different.

People will probably hold me more accountable, people will probably expect me to be less bright, less energetic, less everything. Because maybe I'll only start to care about the things that make up the everyday. Kids, work, groceries, meals, bills.

Maybe I'll start to expect less from myself too.

But I hope that even if I turn into that person, I remember to notice moments, and take time for myself.

The taste of apples, the smell of flowers, the laughs of people I love, the dances in the middle of sleepless nights, and the value of a book by a window on a rainy day.

I hope I remember to keep doing what is important to me, that I keep the life that I have in my twenties and make it grow. I hope I can remember what I wanted to do and do it.

I also hope that if that doesn't happen, if I get distracted or worried and start thinking that I could solve everything by being young again; that I remember to enjoy where I am, and the things that make up moments instead of the things that make up life.

Something about being twenty makes me so afraid about the future. But I hope that somehow the moments will turn into years that fill my life with all the things I had hoped it would since I was little.

And I hope I don't forget that.