In all honesty, this is going to sound ridiculous. But turning 26, has really freaked me out. I’m just 1 month into my 26th year and I’m feeling overwhelmed and flooded with emotions that I’ve never felt before. I know if you are reading this and you are above the age of 26, you are probably rolling your eyes and thinking that I am dramatic as heck.
Let me dig into a few key things. COVID-19. No, this isn’t another piece about how humans are struggling to socialize after quarantine or anything. As you ALL have probably felt, I feel like 3 years of my life, to rephrase, critical years of my life have been lost. I missed out on late nights out with my friends, date nights with my boyfriend, exploring the world, and just being overall adventurous. I worked my ass off all pandemic and I was left feeling burnt out, sad and lonely.
My brain is indecisive, I accept this and have even learned to love this. I find it easier to find optimism in most options that I have. On the flipside to this, it leaves me incapable of deciding on a single damn thing. For example, I told myself that I would go and get my Masters. My indecisiveness has left me wondering “hmmm, but what if I go to school for one thing and then decide to change my career path, well that’s just going to be a waste of my time and money.” I’ve always been the type of person values education, and encourages everyone to learn something new everyday, it doesn’t even need to be a formal degree or course, even just reading a book has such value and ability to change ones life.
My good ol’ (quarter century year old) heart, is set on the man of my dreams, I actually feel very confident about this one. But at the good ripe age of 26 years old, what are the next steps here? Marriage? Mortgages? BABIES? It’s not that all of this scares me, I think the timeline is what scares me, my lack of confidence that I have in being able to “do it”. It’s not so much about the commitment in itself as it is about the added stress these commitments will come with. If we marry first, for example, I am sick and tired of hearing the words “the first year is the hardest”… EXCUSE ME GIVE ME SOME CONTEXT, Why exactly is it the hardest? If we get a mortgage first, will money stress continue to work its way into my everyday thoughts? Will this become an obsession that will cause unnecessary stress? Is owning a home a pressing goal that will set the precedence of what I am to focus on going forward, and how will this impact our relationship? And babies, OH HELL NO, my uterus is not ready for this one yet.
I am freaked out, I have feelings of fear, anxiety, sadness. But strangely enough I also feel excitement, the kind I would imagine someone would feel before jumping out of a plane and trusting that the parachute will work. Speaking of which, can someone remind me why this is on my bucket list?
