Something about hitting the age of 20 is so sentimental; you are no longer chained to the word “teenager,” and you have 10 years ahead of you that are jam-packed with major life changing events. You have an idea of what you want these next 10 years to look like, but you have a hard time depending on that idea when so much is still left in the unknown. Don’t freak out yet. You have a lot of lessons ahead of you, and as your progress into your 20s you will start to realize many important things about life that may make the 10-year road a little easier to travel.
1. Quality always wins over quantity
It’s like the old saying, “I’d rather have four quarters than 100 pennies.” This goes for almost anything – shoes, clothes, purses, cars and friends. Notably, you will start to plan the funeral for all of your Forever 21 clothes. You will begin to prefer two pairs of nice, quality jeans to 12 pairs that rip in the crotch every time you try to dance to Usher’s “Yeah.”
2. Love should always come freely
Of all the things we rush in life, love should never be one of them. Love is the one thing that should never have exceptions — it should be perfect because we gave it time to be. There is no cardinal rule about age-limits anywhere: being single at any point in your 20s does not make you some sort of circus animal. In fact, being single in your 20s means that it hasn’t happened for a reason. Never chase love and never push, pull and squeeze it to make it fit into your life; it should fit because there is a place for it, and that place will be made at the perfect time without you having to make it.
Yes, it’s cliché but love always comes to you when you least expect it. If you are always expecting it to be waiting around the corner, or hiding under your desk, it will never come. When people ask you how you and your husband met, you never want the answer to be, “I was a stage-five clinger until he finally decided to just marry me!” Sit back and let life handle this one.
3. You will fail more than once
You are going to screw up. No, you are going to royally screw up, and it’s going to happen more than once. Metaphorically speaking, at some point in your 20s you will find yourself up sh*t’s creek without a paddle. You are going to want to give up and float to shore. Don’t. Keep going, and keep failing. You realize once you do get to shore that you got there because you had to figure out how to get there without a paddle. That is the best feeling in life — realizing that you figured out how to get through the sh*t all by yourself.
4. A man isn’t the only thing that will break your heart
There seems to be some unwritten rule somewhere in this world that a man is the only thing that can break your heart in life; this is not true. Anything that you are capable of loving is capable of breaking your heart. You will come to find that you fall in love with a lot of things throughout this decade: friends, pets, a job. Don’t feel like you’re being over-dramatic when you are heartbroken over Chubby the hamster’s death, or not getting the job you were dying for; instead, be grateful that you had something important enough to make you feel that way. Don’t ever let yourself believe that a man is the only thing important enough to leave you brokenhearted.
5. HOW to be in debt
If you are going to make a mess of your bank account and credit score, make it count: get an education, travel, invest and learn how to cook. You’d much rather sit on a mountain of debt with a life worth looking back on than sit on a mountain of money with no stories to tell. Money well spent is money that takes you places and teaches you lessons. The only lesson a $30,000 Birkin Bag will teach you is how to file for bankruptcy.
6. The importance of moving away from home
Moving away from home is the only way to help you realize what it actually means to you. As you get older, coming home grows more meaningful each time; you will get butterflies when you pull into your driveway for the holidays and feel sick to your stomach when you have to leave after a long weekend. You start to appreciate home for what it really is – a go to place with your pets, parents, good food and cable when life just flat out sucks. You also start to appreciate every moment you have spent and will spend at home, realizing your house won’t be your home forever.
Knowing how to miss home also helps you find value in new places. Every time you go somewhere, you will start to get a strange feeling; you will not only realize that you are going to miss the people you love, but you will also miss the person you are at that exact time and place because you will never be that way ever again.
7. Your type in partner
For as long as you can remember, you thought that hell would freeze over before the day came that you found men similar to your own father attractive. One day, you are going to wake up and–for some odd reason–find middle-aged men with giant beer-guts playing golf eye-catching. Obviously, this realization isn’t because you are into men on the verge of heart disease; it simply means that your taste in lovers is changing from Lizzie McGuire’s Ethan Craft into men (or women) that you can see yourself marrying and starting a family with. You will begin to value a sense of humor, independence and modesty over a hot body and “mad flow.” You will date dozens of people before you start to get a solid idea of your ideal man or woman. After all, you must go through enough bad ones to recognize a good one when he comes along so you can say, “There you are! I have been waiting for you.”
8. You don’t need to drink five days a week
When I went away to school, I had convinced myself that I was going to go be swept off my feet away to this fantasy land they call “college.” I thought I would drink five nights a week, wake up looking like a Persian Princess, four-point all of my classes and basically run the world. Almost three years and 600 hangovers later, I have started to realize that you don’t have to go out every night to feel like you have lived your college years up to their fullest potential. Obviously Beyoncé was not including the 500,000+ drunk and hungover 20-somethings when she said, “Girls run the world.” As you get older, your ability to fight off a hangover will lessen more and more by the day. It’s okay to stay in and watch movies or get work done; your body and liver will thank you tomorrow, next week and until the day you die.
9. Who your real friends are
In your 20s, so many things change: you go to college, graduate, move, have multiple different jobs, maybe get married and maybe have kids. This decade is the point in your life where you meet the most people, and you will notice your social circle changing. Some people call this “friend hopping” like it’s a bad thing. Changing your social circle is a good thing during these years; you are allowing yourself to form relationships with all different types of people. You will meet the girls who will turn into your bridesmaids, and realize that you no longer have anything in common with many of your friends from high school. Most importantly, you start to learn what friends you can call when you are distraught over a breakup or death, and what ones you can call when you need someone to pluck your mole hair on your chin: it’s like the natural selection of friends.
10. What you do and don’t like
You are going to land your dream job after slaving away as an intern for three years, only to realize that you absolutely hate it. You will try new food, realize that guys with beards turn you on, change your favorite color nine times and decide that after six years of devoted listening, you hate Dubstep. This is the essence of your 20s — learning who you are, what you love and what you hate. It’s much easier to make up your mind about these things when you start to let go of popular opinion, which you will also begin to realize does not matter.
11. YOU are your only priority
For the first time in your life, you are only responsible for yourself and no one else is responsible for you. Don’t take this as a quarter-life crisis – learning how to depend on yourself is a wonderful and very important thing. Your 20s are the time to be selfish; travel, move to the city just because you feel like it, change jobs, stay out late, buy that dress just because you want it hanging in your closet. This 10-year window is the only time where it gets to be about you- no kids, no husband and no parents to answer to. You get to know yourself, and more importantly learn to love yourself. Once you learn to put yourself first, you create room for experiences that will reveal your spirit and allow you to love others. So go ahead and fill up that bath tub, read an entire book in one day, or watch movies for 24 hours straight — you don’t have anyone else in the world to care about but yourself.