I’m going to be 25 in April. That’s a quarter of a century. Makes a girl think.

I know I made a hopeful promise of the twenties roaring but they feel like the purgatory between youth and adulthood. The weltschmerz I’ve found myself in lately tells it all. This strange term describes the depression that arises from comparing the world as it is to a hypothetical idealized world I had in mind. If there’s anything my interactions with humans and more particularly the internet has taught me, none of my experiences are unique. In my thinking, I came up with a few theories to explain this delirium and imminent crisis that I happen to share with strangers on TikTok.

The misery seems to have begun with that graduation gown and following jubilation. On graduating, the idyllic and problem free life you have lived for a little over twenty years suddenly stops. For the first time, you don’t have control of your life with no scheduled semesters and exams to pass. The happiness or at very least comfort was based on the certainty we enjoyed as well as the safety of seeing that everyone around us was doing the same thing. It is after graduation that people begin to forge their own paths and with the internet intensifying the diversity of said journeys, we find ourselves second guessing our own even more.

If this isn’t your story, then this next scenario might be. You do actually land your dream job in the field you wanted. While it’s everything you hoped it would be, six months in and you don’t feel as happy as you thought landing the job would make you. You feel burnt out by the routine. You go through an 8-5 on weekdays and proceed to spend your weekends recovering from this and preparing for the next. You quickly realize that you don’t want to spend the rest of your life trapped in this vicious cycle but there’s no clear way out. You definitely could use the money and you don’t want to be one of those people who quit their jobs for peace and end up so miserable that the peace is further disturbed. This really makes me wonder how our parents and their generation pulled it off.

Outside your career, if you wake up and more than occasionally wonder what you are doing with your life, welcome to the club. It doesn’t stop there and it spirals into a whole existential crisis questioning your reason for being. You are worried that you are lagging behind on the timeline you set for yourself, you want a family but haven’t even found anyone you like enough. Did I say family? Why would I want a family right now when MY career is barely started. Do I have capacity to take care of kids? I think I should start by dealing with my attachment issues and healing the childhood traumas first. Why are these not feeling like the best years I was promised? Am I young or old? Do I go out this weekend or stay home and clean? (It goes on and on)

While it appears that this crisis, like all others is socially motivated, the quarter life crisis is actually chemical. It’s not until around the mid-late twenties that the brain finishes its development with the prefrontal cortex being among the last parts to be fully developed. This part of your brain underneath the forehead is responsible for planning, working memory and impulse. In other words, it’s not your fault that in the whims of youth, you are not able to fully predict the consequences of your actions, anticipate events in your environment or manage your emotional reactions. It’s that big forehead’s fault that you generally cannot plan for the future.

Traditional narratives have painted teenage hood as the time when our identity forms and at the end we are granted adulthood privileges. This creates the impression that we ought to have our lives figured out but as established, emotional development continues well into our late twenties when adolescent actually comes to an end. At the heart of your crisis is the expectation that you should be adulting hard when you’re not even ready for it.

Besides feeling stuck, your crisis may be manifested by you always moving but never moving forward. With the things that used to define you being taken away from you, you find yourself rootless and just drifting through life. A much more dangerous response is where you choose to rebel and incessantly refuse to grow up by running away from any commitment that adulthood calls for. Whatever the case may be, we are in this hood together and I hope that alone alleviates the pressure.

For anybody who so far has felt targeted by this post, whether aggressively or even slightly remotely, here is our assignment.

1. Accept the lack of control over your life. Embrace that uncertainty and enjoy the beauty of becoming.
2. Don’t avoid the serious stuff, it’s here to stay.
3. Follow your natural timing and don’t give into societal pressure. A lot of the adults around you are play-acting so relax. Figure it all out in your own time. There’s no one- size fits all model to doing life.
4. Carpe Diem. Live your life in the present. Engage in the small things that matter. Finding your direction is more important than simply just moving.
   And a personal favorite,
5. In the grand scheme of things, you’re actually quite young. Give yourself grace.