I’m 23, a third of the way through what is allegedly going to be the best decade of my life. So why do I—and the majority of the rest of my peers—feel so utterly and irredeemably fucked?
Twenty-three has felt like the freshers’ week of life: a hectic, messy, confusing period that has me reckoning with almost every aspect of my identity. Through living, working and dating in London, I’m constantly meeting new people. And, like the irritating 18-year-old fresher on campus, I am far too eager to please, to be liked, to not come off as desperately lost.
At the slightest inconvenience, I topple from my precarious pedestal as mature young adult and spiral into petulant-teenager-dom. One moment I’m meal-prepping an elaborate salad, containing kale, almonds, lemon peel and other ingredients the average shopper would be smug to have in their basket. The next moment I’m having my first shower in 48 hours, angrily listening to Taylor Swift’s “Mr Perfectly Fine”—because I’ve just seen that my ex is going on a lads’ holiday to Italy. Even though we broke up over a year ago. And I’m over him.
I’ve recently been feeling more like a teenager than I felt as an actual teenager. At least between the ages of 13 and 19, I had a clear goal to work towards (GCSEs, A-levels and then university). These days I’m not so sure what I want. If the end goal is “happiness”—a nebulous and ever-changing concept that’s far less quantifiable than an exam result—then I’m highly likely to get lost along the way. It is both exciting and terrifying looking at the vast stretch of time that I have ahead of me, not knowing what all the years I have left to live will entail.
In fact, my sense of choice paralysis has been so acute that I went and got a fig tattooed on my body—inspired by Sylvia Plath’s metaphor from The Bell Jar, where her protagonist imagines a different future “like a fat purple fig” winking from every branch of a tree.
I went on a run today, for the first time in over a year. As I re-entered the house, feeling virtuous, I contemplated a total rebrand—a complete overhaul of my personality. Maybe I’m not meant to be a party girl, maybe I’m a “clean girl”. I could replace pints with green smoothies, hash browns with granola, meaningless sex with mindfulness.
I feel tired just thinking about all of the things I could or might one day be. I feel exhausted at the thought of all the things I would have to do and change about myself to become them.
Plath’s tragically premature end aside, I do take comfort in knowing that I’m not the first 23-year-old to suffer from this fig-tree affliction. Every generation, regardless of the state of the world (and the UK economy), has felt or will feel this stifling sense of indecision.
And thanks to the internet—and my generation’s penchant for oversharing—we talk about Plath’s plight more than ever. I’ve seen countless tweets and TikToks that reference being a “twenty-something teenage girl”. Many of them relate to the workplace, with one semi-viral tweet saying: “Why are people asking me for my thoughts and opinions on things at work I’m just a 27-year-old teenage girl.”
Translated, these tweets all echo the same sentiment: although I am legally and biologically an adult, I feel as inexperienced and full of angst as a teenage girl. This seems particularly applicable to women aged between 22 and 24, when literally every aspect of your life feels in flux and—while adjusting to all of this immediate change—you’re expected to make Big Decisions that’ll set you on the “right path” towards “success” (in the most heteronormative, capitalist sense of the word).
Logically (and anecdotally), I understand that no one knows what they’re doing, regardless of age. “Adulthood” is mostly just muddling through and hoping for the best. Whenever I’ve vocalised my young-adult angst to my dad he’s said: “I still don’t know what I want to be when I grow up.”
So, I’m trying my best to lean into the uncertainty, to allow life to take me to wherever it is I’m supposed to be. Despite the horrifying state of the economy—and global politics in general—I will try to have faith that things often work themselves out. Que será, será, and so on.
In the meantime, all I can really do is have fun, do good and not sweat the small stuff. I’ll consider the mistakes I make now—the late nights, vodka shots and countless cigarettes—as seasoning for my still-cooking pre-frontal cortex.
