can I tell you?
The twenties.
At times tumultuous, confusing, hardening, exhausting. A decade of becoming.
I find myself almost seven years in and while the really deep, dark, intense years are behind me at long last, they're now taking new shape, with a different type of depth and complexity.
Sometimes it seems as if none of us realize this -- that everyone inevitably goes through their twenties, or is going through them at this very moment too. And while a bottom-of-the-barrel soul-searching may not be everyone's experience of this decade, I think it's safe to say that a certain amount of self-discovery takes place in one way or another, as our brains complete their final big grow.
It's so easy to forget this.
The friends who fall out of our lives. The drunk guy who hits on us awfully at the bar. The musician who performs her own songs. The ones who close themselves up in their homes. The ones who choose selfishly over and over again. The ones who live with their parents. The ones who marry and buy homes and birth children. The ones who search tirelessly on Tinder.
All of us.
For so long, I felt as if I was the only 22 year old on the planet. I just knew that my experience must have been specific to myself. I had no frame of reference.
All the collective 20somethings were fellow 20somethings and yet I lived in my tiny bedroom in the woods of northern Connecticut and felt utterly alone.
Utterly alone.
Can I tell you something?
Can I tell you how many months, years even, I spent without a love interest?
Can I tell you how many hundreds of dollars I spent on psychotherapy and acupuncture and yoga?
Can I tell you how many times I found myself walking through the woods alone?
Can I tell you how many journals I filled?
Can I tell you how many trips to the grocery store I took simply to be around other people who seemingly were living normal people lives?
Can I tell you how many Mary Oliver collections I read?
Can I tell you how many online groups and classes and courses I joined?
Can I tell you how many minutes, hours, days, weeks I spent.....wondering?
Can I tell you.....we are never alone?
