When I was younger, I thought I would be married by twenty-three. The number sounded sturdy and put together. I stand on wobbly feet: a fifth year at a college that I have outgrown, a self-proclaimed writer who keeps starting but never finishing, and goals so big that they never seem to come in to focus. I am not married at twenty-three, but instead heartbroken. I have no job, but instead just big ideas. I am not put together, but instead still searching for all of the pieces.
As an avid reader, this age is void from novels. We see heroines at sixteen taking down governments, first loves, first times, graduating from high school and seemingly starting your life. But once those graduation caps fly into the air we don’t catch up with our characters until they are married, or divorced for the second time; taking off on trips at forty that they forget to do twenty years ago. The “twenty-somethings” seem to be dominating social media and pop culture, but this formative time hasn’t seemed to translate into a novel we can connect with and read over and over again. Is it because these times just don’t seem as relatable as our sixteen-year-old counterparts? Or is it because sometimes reflecting on this time, or looking at ourselves in the mirror, is just too hard?
Our struggles, our lifestyle, it has all been boiled down to lists of “12 Ways to Get Over Your Ex” or “6 Jobs you Should Have if You Want to Change the World.” We glaze over the nights we have spent drinking a bottle of wine with your best friend from high school talking about how things will never be the same. We don’t talk about what it’s really like to have nights you can’t remember and how you feel the next morning. Everyone says that getting over your first or fifth heartbreak just takes time, but we never discuss how much time that actually took or how you let the shower water run cold from laying on the tub floor for too long, singing softly.
This is my next chapter. I am about to be graduating college. I am coming out of what I thought was a beautiful and romantic first serious relationship. I am going to be not only job searching but soul searching, something I am starting to realize is a lifelong process. My blog that I started a bit ago has more of a faith focus with a lifestyle edge; cookie-cutter, “5 Ways to Recharge Your Faith in 2018.” I wanted an outlet where I could not glaze over this part in my life but to fully submerge myself in it. Words are powerful. Stories are essential. If I am going through this next chapter, I realized maybe I didn’t have to do it alone. Maybe there’s a twenty-something out there who just wants to hear their story told too.