The Right Side of Crazy

Here’s the thing about your twenties: they suck.

 Not it sucks. They suck. Your twenties don’t just suck as a decade. Every single year in your twenties sucks in a new and different way. Ways that will make you doubt the notion that your life has to improve at some point because you will, in fact, be forced to throw yourself from a bridge otherwise. Or, in the case of the Putnam County barnyard town I live in, trip off the gangplank crossing over a needle-infested shallow creek.

Okay. Maybe it’s not that bad.

But, suffice it to say, your twenties really do suck. Although I didn’t make up the intravenous needle part. I live in a weird place.

As a teenager, you spend a heap load of time thinking about college – how smart you need to be to get there, which ones are worth your (parents’) money, how cool you’ll look drinking coffee in the campus café, whether or not you’ll finally lose your virginity. (Well, perhaps that was just me.) The future seems all glittery and hazy and inevitable.  You have some quasi-plausible life planned out in which you’re wealthy and educated and all of your pants are perfectly pleated. When you’re that far away, everything looks perfect. But let’s be real: the devil’s in the details.

The whole situation is even worse if you happen to have been born a girl. For whatever reason, American culture prepares girls to live a twenty-something life born of Prada bags and cucumber wraps. Apparently, the moment you hit twenty, you become ultra-chic and infinitely more interesting. If sitcoms and romantic comedies are right, you’ll suddenly start wearing smart slacks and all your jewelry will match. Let me stop you right here: that’s a total lie.

Being a twenty-something woman is a far more complicated business. In those ten years, a number of adult-like things will happen to you, and you will have no real understanding of exactly how you should handle said things. People get married, people break up, people have babies, people die, you lose a job, you get a job, you find out your boyfriend is gay. It happens. You finally realize, somewhere in those years, it may be tremendously fun to throw all-nighters in your shoebox-sized apartment and watch as glittered confetti falls through the air just for the hell of it, but eventually it lands. And somebody’s got to vacuum. As a rule of thumb, this will be the point when you realize you only have access to a mop.

No one really prepares you for the weirdness of your twenties – the way life suddenly stops making sense and your views on everything from deodorant to gun control undergo a massive shift. No one sits you down when you’re nineteen and says, “Listen, sparky, the shit’s about to get really fucking strange. Hang in there, soldier.” Instead, being in your twenties is something akin to being stuck in the middle of a perpetual earthquake; you can’t really do anything but watch as your hand-crafted string art shakes off the wall. You won’t have an evacuation plan ready for the moment you realize being a twenty-something is, more often than not, really awkward because NO ONE TELLS YOU.

In all actuality though, that’s probably a good thing. Who among us would willingly march headfirst into that most agonizing decade armed with little more than six years of abstinence-only education and How I Met Your Mother reruns? Luckily, our culture doesn’t prepare us for the sheer ridiculousness to come in those ten years following our teens. Because, when you do finally realize that you are not likely to end up hanging out in the local bar with your friends every night until 3 AM looking like a J. Crew model, the desire to be a twenty-something quickly evaporates. Who wants to be poor, unsteady, and confused? No one sane, that’s for damn sure.

I realize this all sounds dire. The truth is it feels dire sometimes. Most days in my twenties have been marked by my complete lack of interest in the daily routines of my life. Hygiene? Optional. Leaving my couch? Not applicable. Work? Well, okay. I do really like to eat. That ridiculously expensive gourmet mustard I have to spread on my turkey sandwiches isn’t just going to appear in my mailbox – which I hardly ever check anyway since my twenties have also been hallmarked by junk mail. Truly, Capital One, if I didn’t answer you the first time, chances are I’m not going to answer you the second time. Spare the o-zone layer and leave that tree alone.

BUT, don’t worry. I know, I know. Now that I’ve told you how awful your twenties really are, don’t worry?? Bitch. Seriously, though. Don’t throw it all away just yet.

To be honest, I don’t always feel like I’m lost in the pages of an on-going Phyllis Reynolds Naylor novel. There are usually some very nice people along the way who are sympathetic to the plight of the miserable first world twenty-something to give you pointers and a pair of clean underwear. Plus, even when I do feel completely bewildered, some of the wandering isn’t so terrible. I’ve met some of the most fantastic people I’ve ever known or will ever know during my twenties. I’ve been in school for the better part of the decade, and it’s perfectly acceptable. I’m a student. I’m acquiring knowledge for…whatever is I’m going to do with my future. Relatively speaking, my body is functioning at top notch (although my liver has taken a considerable beating). No one questions me if I get silly tattoos or wear heels just a little too slutty for work or if I rock a Hello Kitty headband every now and then. I can decide to change my bathroom shower curtain on a whim with no complaints. Well, minimal complaints. My felines are exceedingly OCD.

The point is I can. It’s one of the perks of being a twenty-something with little more to my name than the apartment I can barely afford and a rare used-bookstore copy of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn: I can go searching. My life, the life of any twenty-something with a modicum of self-awareness, is a wide open space. Sure, there are lots of paths to choose from, some bright and well-lit and some that look as if they may or may not be hosting a colony of Ted Bundy-esque serial murders. And sure, on more than one occasion I’ve been the token white girl with a flashlight and a low cut t-shirt who falls over a tree stump just as the deranged mass murderer pops out of the brush with his blood-soaked machete. But, the beauty of all this mixed-up twentyness is that I can be that clumsy, albeit dumb, youth. I can because I’m in my twenties and I’m allowed to fuck up.

So maybe I don’t do everything effortlessly. Honestly, I will probably always be the girl who carries a flashlight in a desolate corn field when I should be the next road over picking wild flowers or having relations with vampires or whatever it is girls do in in abandoned fields when they aren’t being chased by one of the seemingly inordinate number of crazed killers on the loose.

And maybe I’ve definitely executed some questionable moral decisions. There’s a whole sub-section of my twenties I’ve termed The Rum Diaries. (Mind you, my liver hasn’t quit on me yet, so I’m just going to assume this blessed trend is meant to continue.) 

Maybe I’m not living in New York, frequenting the best art museums, drinking the finest coffee, wearing the trendiest clothes, writing the next profound works of American literature. But I’m here and I’m young and I can.

All original content copyright Kimberly Turner, 2013-2013].