Early Twenties

I’ve sort of had a revelation in the past six months: The early twenties will probably be the most distorted and life-shaping years of our entire life. Think about it. We are all going at so many different speeds in countless different directions. Some of us are on a highway (in the fast lane), and others are simply enjoying a brisk nature walk.

This has been on my mind a lot lately. This is the time in our lives where we either have it all figured out, want to and are working on it, or are totally lost. So many of us feel alone because we feel like no one is in the same place as us. We like to see ourselves as mature, and everyone else (who isn’t in the same place) as immature. Of course, there are those select few who seem to have whizzed right passed their twenties and into their thirties, where marriage and little ones suddenly appear out of thin air.

For example, I am at a place in my life where I no longer fully enjoy drinking hard liquor, dressing in black, and going to dimly lit bars. I’d much rather stay at home in my pajamas, drink tea, and watch a good movie or read a good book. Another girl my age, however, is currently getting dressed in tight pants and red heels, and is going to have a really fun night with loud music and sticky floors (and she’s going to have a headache in the morning).

Her 21 is my 19, and my 21 is probably going to be her 27.

The girl I sat next to in elementary school, for example, currently has two or three kids.

My 21 is her 16, and her 21 is my... God, I can’t even imagine. Seriously, how is that possible? But that’s where she is in her life, and it probably seems just right to her.

Many of people I graduated high school with will be facing their senior year of college in the fall, whereas myself and a few others have decided to reassess what our path should be and are now facing two or more years of school. Their 22 will be my 24. I don’t even want to think about that.

The point of all this rambling is to perhaps make people realize that, even though we may seem alone at this current pit stop in our lives, that we are in our early twenties and we are all progressing at different speeds. Some of us are getting married. Some of us have never been in love. Some of us have kids. Some of us know nothing of what we want. The big important thing to remember in the midst of all of this is simply to not freak out. This is normal. This is okay. Just because some people are hightailing it to their final destination, doesn’t mean that you can’t stop and smell the roses -- to appreciate what you have now. It’s a peaceful purgatory. Not here and not there. It’s your own special place, and though you may sometimes feel alone, there are others that are exactly where you are. You just might not have met them yet (there’s a Michael Buble song about this). Maybe their 21 is your 21, or their 24 is your 21, or even perhaps their 19 is the same as your current landmark. Maybe you will progress together, and maybe you won’t. That’s the beauty of life.

I think that we should remember that we shouldn’t try to speed through life. It’ll speed through on its own. We shouldn’t feel like we have to speed through eras to catch up with what everyone thinks is the current pastime. If one person is at the point in her life where she strays from the current social expectations of those around her because she finds that it no longer makes her feel whole or happy, then that’s okay. She should. She’s growing. Her 21 is no longer their 21, but there is really no right answer when you’re in your early twenties. Honestly, it’s a little bit like starting a whole new kind of puberty. No one wants to talk about it, but everyone is going through it at different speeds. We’re all changing into what we will become. We’ll all get there eventually. Some of us are just late bloomers.

We can’t stop life from happening, so we may as well try to make it last as long as possible.So enjoy your 19. Enjoy your 20. Enjoy your 21, and enjoy your 22 (there’s a Taylor Swift song about this). We’re all going at different speeds. When we’re on a highway, we need to just hold on until our next exit. When we’re on a nature trail, we should stop and enjoy all of what’s around us. We’re in our twenties. We should enjoy it. Our life hasn’t started, and it’s only just begun.

An essay I was told to write.

 *** I was told to write this essay for a book being published about the value of the university experience. When I sat down to decide what I wanted to write, I decided to write about my defining moment at Northwest. This moment, coincidentally, happens to be the unhappiest, terrifying, and all around rock bottom moment that I've yet to experience. This is behind me, and I'm sincerely the happiest I've ever been, so I feel comfortable enough to share this with others. Names have been changed, but the lesson stays true. I'm not seeking pity, apologies, or what have you. I am just sharing. I am who I am today because I was faced with this February night my sophomore year at Northwest. ***

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The value of a university education is a topic so broad that I bet few people actually realize just how tremendously four years can or has affected them. Generally, without putting much thought into it, one could say that the value of a university education is that it prepares you for a better future, teaches you responsibility, and so on and so forth. I could talk about the educational aspect of going to college, but I honestly do not believe that the real, life changing value of the university experience comes from inside the classrooms or textbooks. I have been at Northwest for nearly three years now, and in that time I have learned more about myself and others than I had originally thought possible. That sounds cliché, but it is true. I’ve been severely depressed, felt small and insignificant, and overall just plain unhappy, but I’ve also been on top of the world, strong and powerful, and overwhelmingly content. I’ve been on both sides of the spectrum, and it’s all because of the people I surrounded myself with.

In order to properly communicate what I’m talking about, I feel like it’s only necessary to share the absolute worst and scariest moment of my life. But first, some quick backstory. My freshman year, I met a seemingly nice group of people, and they became my closest friends at Northwest. They introduced me to parties and alcohol, and I finally felt like I was one of the cool kids. These people were all from the same small town area and they had known each other for years. Even though I occasionally felt like I was the odd man out, I was willing to ignore these random spurts because it was nice to feel like I was part of a group most of the time. There was one specific, significant person in this group, and his name was Kyle. Kyle was funny, but in a way that was always at other people’s expense. He was flirty, but was always chasing after an ex-girlfriend back at home. He was smart, but often thought about what was best for him instead of others. Regardless of these things, I fell extremely hard for him. We did a sort of “will they or won’t they” dance for about a year, and then I finally gave up. I accepted that he never actually had any interest in being with me, just like how his ex-girlfriend never had any interest in getting back together. We were both just somebody else’s fall back for entertainment.

           Fast forward a month, nothing had changed, and I had begun talking with another guy I had met in one of my classes. One night I brought him to the house where we all hung out to watch a basketball game, and I could immediately see the fury in Kyle’s eyes that I had moved on to greener pastures. His stare was daggers. As the night progressed, Kyle got progressively more intoxicated. He tried to be friendly with me in ways I used to want, but I was not drinking and was not interested. I left and dropped my date (who by the end of the night I saw more as a brother, mind you) off at his apartment, and made my way back to mine.

This is when my entire outlook on what I wanted in life changed forever.

My roommate had gotten a text from a mutual friend saying, “I’m warning you that Kyle is coming over. He’s really drunk and he said he’s going to break all of your and Kate’s stuff.” We immediately got scared, because we knew that Kyle was not a nice drunk (because he wasn’t nice most of the time, anyways). We ran outside, locked our door, and were going to try to stop him on his way over. However, as we walked outside, we saw that he was already there. He walked right passed us in blind fury, went upstairs and attempted to open our door. Upon finding out it was locked, he began throwing his body full force into the door, trying to break it down. I screamed at him to stop, and he yelled a multitude of awful things back at me, including, “I’m going to hurt you, Kate. I don’t care if it’s physical, mental, or emotional. I’m going to hurt you.” With this, he ran out the door.

We hoped that he was gone, and my roommate and I gathered ourselves before checking outside to see if the coast was clear. It wasn’t. Outside, we found Kyle crouched down by my car, hubcaps thrown to the side, and there was a knife clasped in his hand. I am not a yeller, I am not a person who involves herself in bad situations, but here I was. Screaming at him, ordering him to give me the knife, I was in a situation that I thought would never happen to me. I ended up hoisting him up by the collar of his plaid shirt and pushing him away from my car. This is the only time in my life where I ever thought it was possible that a man might hit me.

Gesturing to the now flat tires on my car, I yelled, “Do you even know what you are doing? You are breaking the law! Go home before I call the police!”

He stared at me. “I’m done with you, Kate,” he said. “Don’t ever talk to me again. Don’t even try. I can’t believe you showed up to the party with that guy –”

“What does he have to do with this?”

He stopped. I knew that question would end it all, because he would never be man enough to own up to the way he really felt about the situation. “Nothing,” he said. “I’m done.”

And he walked away, leaving any miniscule amount of friendship we had left behind him. My roommate and I returned to our apartment to find that our door had a massive crack down the side. If Kyle would have thrown his body into our door one more time, he would have broken in. This crack has served as a daily reminder of this lesson.

What is funny and incredibly sad about this situation is that Kyle was not alone. A mutual guy friend who was bigger and stronger than Kyle was with him, and he could have stopped the situation once he saw it progressing, but he didn’t. As our mutual friends found out, they defended him with typical “it was because he was drunk” excuses. Zero of my friends offered comfort, and zero of my friends truly came to my aide. This whole experience made me realize that these friends that I had were not really my friends, because none of them seemed to care much about my safety or well-being. Thus far, this moment was the most alone I have ever felt in my entire life. I waited for an apology – from anyone – and it was never received. I spent the rest of the semester struggling through the day, crying more than I ever had, and leaving Maryville as soon as I possibly could.

As difficult as it was to return to Northwest after what I had been through, I knew I didn’t really have a choice on the matter. I did, however, have a choice of what kind of people I surrounded myself with. I chose not to surround myself with people who excessively drank, who did not care about me, and were all around just a negative force in my life. I decided that I would rather be alone than unhappy. It did not take long for me to reconnect with old friends that cared about me, and to find a new place in the tiny town of Maryville where I knew I could be happy. I joined an organization, and I had a relationship with someone who treated me so well that I couldn’t believe I ever put up with the way I had been treated in the past.

That right there is what I think the value of the university experience is all about. I had something awful happen to me, learned everything I could from it, and now I only allow myself to thrive. I learned not to settle, not to allow bad things to happen to me, I learned to change what was bad and replace it with good, and above all I learned to surround myself with what I knew I deserved. I may learn facts and theories in the classrooms at Northwest, but I learned about the value of my life outside the university walls. Don’t get me wrong, there are some wonderful experiences that come with college, but this particular experience has majorly shaped what I expect out of life. I personally believe that it realigned my life. Before, my grades were good, but could be better. I was living for the weekend, even though sometimes I wouldn’t remember it. I was settling for so many aspects of my life without even realizing it. With this behind me, I now go through each day looking towards the sky and focusing on the good, focusing on what I love, those who love me, and what makes me happy. I have even made the decision to change my major from a job that will pay the bills, to one that I am passionate about. I have learned to set myself up for happiness and success. The real value of my university experience was leaving the worst people I have ever met, so that I could recognize the best people I would ever meet when they walked into my life.