Twentysomething

It’s two minutes before 6 p.m. and the bus was about to leave for Manila. My friends and I were all huddled up as we said our farewell to a friend who, in a few days, would be starting a new chapter of his life in Taiwan.

As he climbed the bus, I felt sad (I still do) about him leaving. But I also couldn’t help feeling a pang of guilt for being envious. It is the same envy I feel whenever a friend announces his or her plan to marry, whenever a peer updates us on career achievements, or when someone I know decides to pursue graduate school, which I should be pursuing by now. It is the same envy and insecurity that have been bugging me for some time.

The bus left with my friend shedding tears, and somehow my insecurity grew even more. I envy him for his courage to leave everything comfortable behind and start a new life. And even though his decision was evidently hard, I envy him for his sense of certainty that, regrettably, I lack. In the span of eight months, I’ve been stuck in the same loop of profound fear and anxiety. I am anxious and daunted by having to make decisions like adults do, and the possibility of regret and unhappiness that come with it.By the time I was alone, and while my friend was on his way to a bright future, I was once again consumed by my own thoughts and existential dread—by the grim reality that I was facing adulthood and that I did not have a single clue what I was doing. The feeling of being left behind started creeping in as well. Inevitably, I felt the urgency to make a decision, whatever decision, because my friends were already riding their own buses and moving forward, while I still didn’t know which bus was mine.

In times like these, I would often hear the voices of my siblings reminding me that I am only 22—still so young to figure things out. Enjoy things and stop worrying too much, they’d tell me. I am lucky to have such an understanding family, yet however they reassured me, the bewilderment would still be there. I still wished I was making the same big decisions as my peers were. I am a bachelor’s degree holder and a licensed professional, but I am nowhere near the promise of a stable future, unlike my peers.

I would eventually learn that this sense of failure and dread is what they call a quarter-life crisis, and it is very common among people my age. According to Dr. Gia Sison in her YouTube series Ask Doc G, a quarter-life crisis usually happens to people ages 20-30 years old. It is a stage where you feel lost, not knowing what to do and where you are in life. Likewise, Alex Fowke, a clinical psychologist, defines quarter-life crisis as a period of insecurity, doubt, and disappointment surrounding your career, relationships, and financial situation in your 20s.

Partly, the problem comes from the unrelenting standards of success in our society. We, the twentysomethings, grew up with anecdotes of older generations landing jobs, marrying the love of their lives, buying cars, and having their own place by the time they were 30. We were told of the notion of a “dream job” and “the one,” without preparing us for the fact that both may have become much harder to come by. And thanks to the advent of social media, these notions and standards of success are further reinforced with highlighted if well-edited posts from our peers, which we mistakenly compare with our own.

We are exposed to a specific definition of success, and we hold on to them even though realistically it no longer applies to us. The success that the older generation achieved is harder to accomplish in our time due to unaffordable housing, expensive commodities, less job security, and lower incomes. We have to realize that we need to change our perspective of success, and that it varies from person to person, in order to free ourselves of this notion.

We have to realize that someone’s journey is not necessarily the same as our journey. Someone’s measure of success doesn’t have to be ours. Quarter-life crisis is a hard period for us twentysomethings, that is true—that is why it is necessary that we talk about it.

I believe I still have a long way to go in this matter; I haven’t overcome this stage of my life yet. But if there is something I’ve also learned from being a twentysomething, it’s that nothing is permanent, especially crises. Right now, I am dedicated to reshaping my own definition of success according to my own terms. I hope when the time comes that I have already redefined what success is, I will know where to go and what to do next.

For now, I shall take comfort in the fact that it is okay to be where I am, even though it isn’t where I want to be. Nothing is permanent; who knows where I’d be tomorrow?

Michael Roy Brosas, 22, is a mechanical engineering graduate from Bicol University.