Thoughts on Turning 25


As someone who's never really liked birthdays anyway, I feel like I've been pretty chill about slowly getting older, edging slightly closer to the inevitability that I'm one day going to be 'super old'. However, when I hit 25 on January 14th I had a little bit of an existential crisis, if I'm totally honest. The realisation that I am officially in my 'mid twenties', not one year short of 'late twenties', which only means I'll soon be in my 'thirties'. *Cue internal screaming*.

Because of this I actually did have a little cry about the whole thing, which is ridiculous when you think about it. Most people tell me that their thirties end up being the best years of their life, but this is only couple with all the people who tell me that they wish they could go back to their 'twenties' because they were the best years of their life. 

If the best years of my life are RIGHT NOW then what if it's only all going to slowly get worse!?

I don't discuss my mental health on here much, perhaps that's a post for another day, but I often struggle with the idea that I am wasting my life away by worrying and being sad over insignificant things. If I look back, it really wasn't until I turned 23 that I actually started living my life how I wanted to. There's three years gone. And then I'm in the mindset of, am I really as happy as I could be, right this second? At age 25? 

It's all a bit much. 

It isn't helped by the fact that time moves ever quicker the older you get. I remember when I was in my teenage years, the period of time between being 10 and being 15 felt like a lifetime. Now, the period of time between 20 and 25 has disappeared in the blink of an eye. 

Because the truth is, no. I'm not as happy as I could be. Sometimes, I wonder if I'm truly happy at all and if I'm not happy now, at 25, when life is supposed to be the best it's going to be, will I ever experience true happiness? 

Perhaps this post has turned into one on my mental health. 

So I've made a resolution, not a new year's resolution (because I already broke those), but a new quarter of a century's resolution - to just live without a number. The idea of holding up a pair of ever increasing rose gold birthday balloons scares the absolute hell out of me, but its inevitable. The only way to stop the ageing clock is to break it altogether and of course its far better to grow old than to stop growing at all. 

My twenties might not end up being the best years of my life. Maybe my fifties will. Nobody truly knows until they reach it. But there's no pressure either. I've got to stop putting pressure on myself to have the best life possible and just live




I'm done with the crisis, I'm embracing it. There's a quote that I love from the fictional epigraph of The Fault in Our Stars by John Green:



As the tide washed in, the Dutch Tulip Man faced the ocean: “Conjoinder rejoinder poisoner concealer revelator. Look at it, rising up and rising down, taking everything with it.”
“What’s that?” I asked.
“Water,” the Dutchman said. “Well, and time.”


The older I get, the more this quote resonates with me; the ever fleeting nature of time. You can't hold onto it, you can't save it, it's just there and then it's gone. So you just have to enjoy it, it's really the only option left. x


0 comments