22

I made it to my 20s on an army crawl and learned that

Everything they said was true

But especially the things they forgot.

Like how every decision has to be your own

Or else it will belong to someone else,

But that is the hardest thing you’ve ever had to learn to do

Because you’ve always relied on friends or your parents to provide you the solutions you now have to think of. 

Because one day they’ll all be dead.

Or how you’ll walk into a room or a restaurant or a cafe 

And no one will speak to you unless you speak to them

Or is that racism/sexism/homophobia?

You can’t tell.

Also, every thought is a question?

Because it takes you so much longer to find the answers

Than when you were 16 and knew everything about yourself.

Now you have no idea who you are

Despite creating your being for the past 22 years

You question everything you do

Before, during and after you’ve done it.

Even the things you don’t do.

And everything is so expensive 

Like toothpaste and cavities

And new underwear now that your old ones are permanently stained from girlhood.

You have to buy it all yourself

Since it’s just as embarrassing to ask your mom to buy them

As it is pulling 13 year old underwear out of your buttcrack in public.

You remember stupid things like

Bachelorette Monday

And to wear your watch on your left wrist not your right

But forget real shit

Like not sleeping on your stomach

Because it hurts your fucking spine

Or credit card payments.

You feel like a character for so many reasons

Mostly because you’ve read about this part of your life

Or watched it illegally on your school Chromebook

About loving a man who isn’t good for you

Even though you’re the prettiest girl in the world

Or hating your job even though you’re a millionaire 

Or being mad at your friends because they make mistakes

Not because they’re using you.

But none of that actually happens

Because you’re in your twenties

And nobody writes about how your neck aches from the 70 degree angle it makes

Everyday

As you stare at a computer for a paycheck

Or the twenty somethings that don’t live in your town

Because millennials out bought them.

They don’t write about the paranoia you get when you crack your knuckles

Or your toes

Or your neck

Because you’re worried about the arthritis in your family

Becoming your own.

They conveniently leave out how bad you miss your friends from college

Because no one can afford to live in the city you got your degree in

That’s for bureaucratic transplants, or consultants with receding hairlines,

Or white girls who suddenly like baseball.

You and your people

Your gang that you love

Have to spread out like freckles across America’s map

In hometowns you knew you’d never come back to

But can’t afford to leave.

Because no one’s hiring

But they also aren’t taking down the the LinkedIn posts

So you feel hopeful!

They aren’t telling you you didn’t get the job

They’re just taking a while to email you back

It’s a waiting game, you see

Even though there’s hundreds of other wait-ers

All of you attaching your resumes and cover letters

That you reworded

So that this job knows how much you want to be hired

Just like the to whom it may concern before did

And also the ten before that.

So you wait for the response

Just like you wait for the moment your 20s feel like

Walking down a  busy sidewalk in the winter with no idea your meet cute is around the corner, where you’ll conveniently slip and fall in front of them and never speak to them again, until that random party they remember you at two weeks before you’ve fallen in love with them

Or

Sitting on your couch next to your curated girl group of friends as you pick through a Chinese takeout box because your life is shit but you have community, and they’re all just as beautiful and disillusioned as you are so you feel a lot less alone

Or

Coming home after years of never doing so because life has been busy and you’re successful but everyone already knows that because they follow you on Instagram, but you stay away just so you know they know

Because life is all about waiting and wanting

You wanted to be a teen when you were ten

And when you were a teen you wanted to be twenty

And now you’re twenty

With no wants.

Just waiting.