Why does being 20 feel like standing in the waiting room of adulthood?
Before I turned 20, I proclaimed that I would cry on my birthday – and there was nothing anybody could do about it. When I was younger, I longed for adulthood. The thought of wearing heels and click-clacking my way to different places like my mom did excited me.
Now, the thought of having responsibilities and real-life consequences for every action rattles me.
“Twenty years old.” The phrase alone feels daunting and unnerving. The idea of turning 20 had haunted me since I was 18.
It’s this strange in-between, almost like waiting-room syndrome: unable to start new tasks because something looms ahead. It’s not a milestone birthday like 21, so there’s no champagne toast to look forward to. But your age also no longer ends with “teen,” and that terrifies me.
Most 20-year-olds are juniors: a strange place where you don’t have the freedom freshmen and sophomores enjoy, but you also don’t have the jitters for adulthood that seniors do. You’re stuck in the middle—old enough to feel the pressure of “what’s next,” but young enough to think it can still wait.
It’s reached a point where my algorithm definitely knows I’m having an identity crisis. My feed swings constantly between self-care inspiration and night-out content. A perfect summary of being 20: trying to fix your life one day and forgetting responsibilities exist the next.
At this point, I’m not sure if it’s helping me or mocking my inability to balance out that “dream lifestyle”.
On one hand, content creators in their late 20s tell me to enjoy this time since I’ll never get it back. Book those flights. Be spontaneous. Live your life to the fullest before the quiet rhythm of your late 20s sets in.
On the other hand, the “hustle” content creators tell me to set good habits now, since I can have fun anytime I want to. Constantly preaching routines that make me feel guilty for not having a good week at the gym or eating out instead of making it all from scratch. For not having an essentially “Pinterest style” productive morning or night routine.
It’s all a constant tug of war between who I want to emulate, the kind of memories I want to make and the messy reality of my days. From trying to find time to go to the gym to scrolling on my phone endlessly with my assignments lying incomplete.
Still, I’d like to believe that being 20 is a milestone in its own way. You’re out of your teenage “carefree” years, almost on the brink of adulthood, with TikTok and Instagram offering advice from every corner. The ideal year of a 20-year-old should somehow include green juice, yoga mats and career-advice mornings – balanced perfectly with dance floors, espresso martinis and messy 2 a.m. nights.
If you really think about it, this is the one year in the waiting room where we’re never going to be as young, carefree or as beautifully messy as we are right now. This is the time to find our identity, stake our footing in life and build hilarious stories to reminisce on later. Even if you can’t, that’s okay – cause you’re only 20.