I think we’ve all felt awkward from time to time in our life, but when I turned twenty-three I felt awkward. And lost. And bored. Not at that very moment of turning twenty-three when my friend told me happy birthday as we left for a long run or when I put on my purple lipstick or knee-high boots later that night, but over time. It developed over the months of being twenty-three and experiencing my first year of post-grad.
During college, I felt as if I went through a self-discovery of finding myself. My passions were only growing, and I was truly learning who I wanted to be. Walking across the stage at graduation, I felt ready for a life without school and ready for the big, wide world. My opportunities and dreams felt endless and exciting. I didn’t feel lost, awkward, or bored at that very moment, but I thought I already knew who I was. But honestly, my first year of post-grad was another version of self-discovery for me, and I still trying to find myself.
Twenty-two was a motivating year for me. I took a lap around the world, wrote some fiction stories, graduated college, moved to Alaska for a few months, drank a lot of iced pumpkin spice lattes, had amazing times with my friends, and filled up countless journals. I packed and unpacked many times and I will forever be so grateful for those opportunities. It was a year I dreamed of being full of travel and collecting various adventurous stories in my journals along the way. As every year is, not every year is perfect, but overall, it was a beautiful year.
Needless to say, going into twenty-three I was going in on a happy note. Twenty-two was full of what I pictured for my twenties so twenty-three had to be too. There were hardly any doubts in my mind. The night of turning twenty-three, I felt energized and ready for another year of my twenties, but as time went on, I felt bored and lost. I thought I wasn’t living my life the way I set it out to be or it was very different from my twenty-second year. Don’t get me wrong, I did have some very fun times being twenty-three in between the heavy emotions. I moved to Utah for a few months, went to a rave in Salt Lake City, tried snowboarding, kayaked in Minnesota with my fam, became obsessed with the show Prison Break, did the Tilt at the John Hancock Center in Chicago with one of my good friends, and watched another one of my friends make some great cocktails before we played a version of Truth or Dare/Never Have I Ever. Yes, there were great times. But if you know me, I’m very much thinking about the future and what my next step in life will be. As you can assume, I had imagined what my twenty-third year was going to entail.
I had imagined my twenty-three-year-old self living in New York City working in publishing, working on my future writing career, making lots of friends, and thinking I was actually living the life they portray in Friends and How I Met Your Mother (yes, I know those shows are unrealistic, but I will always love them).
Or I had imagined my twenty-three-year-old self living in New Zealand with a backpack and a journal as a nomad who never felt homesick, lonely, or depressed.
Or I imagined myself attending graduate school in a big city to become a librarian someday.
Basically, I had always envisioned myself traveling or living somewhere out of the Midwest when I was twenty-three. I was never going to let anything slow me down or stop me. I was going to travel, move to a city, and become a writer. Those were my big, giant goals. The ones that got me through the bouts of loneliness, the late nights studying in the library convinced I was going to fail this Stats test, or that I was never going to finish this fifteen-page paper. I would roll out of bed in college knowing someday I was going to be one of these things I had imagined for myself. I knew it would all be worth it in the end because I was going to become what I wanted to be.
As everyone knows, life doesn’t always go as planned and curveballs can be thrown at us. Obviously, COVID-19 was a curveball, but I never had expected the curveballs of loneliness, awkwardness, boredom, and a lost feeling I had been experiencing. I had survived my first year of post-grad, and I’ve never felt that lost in my life. My gap year was cut short due to COVID by getting laid off in Park City, Utah, and having to come home. Despite this, I was in a good situation by not being in school having to sacrifice that. My heart went out to everyone whose situations were/are so much worse. I’m very blessed to have a place to come home to. I flew home to my house on March 16th and entered a crazy few months with the rest of the world.
Obviously, a pandemic was not in my plan for my twenty-third year. Throughout the free time, COVID gave some of us, the comparison game seemed to kick in harder and it led all those negative emotions I had been experiencing to spiral. I would be scrolling through Instagram way more than usual and Instagram can lead to the comparison game which is a deep trap. I would be wishing I still had my job, that I was in a relationship, that I lived closer to my friends, that I had an apartment, and so forth.
A lot of the things I had imagined for my twenty-three-year-old self didn’t seem to be happening. At times, I felt as if my twenties were on a train passing by with me not jumping on the train to join them. I never expected to move back home when I was twenty-three when I was always determined to spend my twenties traveling the world. I never thought all of my friends living in different places would be so sporadic when we saw each other. I never thought missing people would hurt this bad.
Yes, life doesn’t go as planned and when we are young, it seems like there are so many options in the world to the point it can be overwhelming. I always have a lot of ideas of things I want to do in my life, but I don’t know precisely when I am going to be doing them.
I have not conquered loneliness, the post-grad blues, or the awkwardness the early and mid-twenties can bring. I wanted to write this to say I’m right there with you and a lot of us don’t know what the heck we are doing. Twenty-three can be a lonely age. I have a very blessed life with amazing family and friends, but remember everything you are feeling is valid despite any situation you might be in. It’s okay to feel lonely, bored, lost, or awkward at twenty-three or any age. I’m twenty-four now and I’m still working through all of this.
We matter and someday, we are not going to feel so lonely and yes, we might feel awkward or bored at times through our twenties or post-grad life, but it’s completely normal. It’s all going to get better someday.
