As humans, we share a lot of the same experiences: we want something, we love, we lose, we grieve. In essence, we all experience a wide range of emotions. So why is it that, even though we all share common sentiments and experiences, we feel as if we are going about life alone, as if we are the first to be touched by the existential dread that comes around in our early 20s?
The truth is, you’re not the only one. In fact, I find that this is a common epidemic that surrounds both my peers and me. It’s as if we all woke up one morning and all of a sudden, the things we were all so sure of, the plans we had made, and the moments we had spent our whole lives looking forward to were all behind us.
I had my own moment in life where I went from being so sure of my next steps and the direction of my life to not having a clue what would happen next. The thing is, it feels like this transformation happens overnight. What’s so unsettling about this “instant” realization is that it’s not that instant at all. Instead, it happened so slowly that we didn’t even realize it was taking shape.
I often find myself comparing this transformation to when you get that phone call on your birthday from a distant relative or out-of-touch aunt or uncle, asking you if you feel any older. Realistically, you don’t feel any different from the day before, but evidently, there is a small nagging part of you that you try to bury that does feel the slightest bit different. We get older with every passing day, but only start to feel the culmination of that age when we move into the following year.
For me, this moment didn’t come as some dramatic breakdown, but more as an epiphany that the life I had begun building for myself at 18 with so much certainty wasn’t wrong, but no longer felt right either. Instead, in my 20s, I found myself shrinking inside the boundaries I once had been so confident to outline. I was paralyzed and unable to grow beyond them. It felt like I had everything figured out, and that sense of direction was my drug, and now I’m going through withdrawals.
My symptoms included practicing the art of escapism. I tried to slip out of my own life through the content I consume, new random tasks and hobbies, anything to avoid the silence that would have forced me to admit that the girl who always had a great sense of direction didn’t know where she was going anymore.
Now, if you’ve gotten this far, you must think that I am about to reveal the key to stop this cycle and abandon this directionally challenged version of myself. Well, I’m sorry that’s not what’s going to happen. Instead, I’m just going to call this period in my life for what it is: my second coming of age.
At 18, adulthood or what we think is adulthood, is loud, it is celebrated, and it is filled with certainty. To the contrary, in our 20s, adulthood is quiet and subtle, filled with doubt and uncertainty, and for some reason, you’ll always be wondering if you are changing your sheets enough. The first coming-of-age is about gaining freedom; the second is about learning to live with the ambiguity that inevitably creeps into your life.
While I’m still in the trenches of my second coming-of-age, I’m realizing that my uncertainty doesn’t equate to failure, and that this kind of growth won’t feel as good as it did at 18. Instead, it resembles loss. I’m losing parts of myself that I had just finally learned to love. I am losing parts of myself that I didn’t even realize were there, but now that they are gone, I am able to feel their absence, and yes, it hurts, but most growing pains do.
The second coming-of-age is something many people in their 20s go through but are unable to name. The larger question at hand is why this is not discussed and why we are not warned. I think it’s because the younger generation has been able to romanticize this sense of being lost, and because the twentysomethings who have experienced this don’t have the right terminology to describe what they went through.
The more I sit with this, the more I realize that this second coming-of-age feels a lot like those birthday calls asking if I feel any older. The answer is always no, but simultaneously, somehow, yes.
I don’t have the answers I thought adulthood would have handed me, but somewhere in between 18 and my early 20s, something in me grew up a little. Not in the loud way like at 18, but in the quiet way, in which real growth tends to take hold. I’m still directionally challenged and still learning to actively live my life rather than escape it, but if progressing into my 20s has taught me anything, it’s that you don’t always feel change while it’s happening. You only recognize it when you step into the next phase of your life and realize you’ve crossed a threshold.