A girl in her twenties

 We were told our 20s would be an open field, a time for discovery and unbothered freedom. Instead, we found ourselves in this beautiful, brutal trap. It’s amaze of expectations, late night anxieties and the sudden jarring realisation that “adulting” isn’t a destination, it’s a perpetual state of construction. For a few days, I sat in the stillness of that trap, waiting for someone to unlock the door. When no one came, I realised something vital: the trap was not going anywhere, but I could change how it felt.   I began to hang my own meaning on these cold grey walls.   The stupid circumstances:  I stopped viewing the unexpected hurdles as enemies. I started seeing them as the texture of the wall cracks that let the light in. The New Faces: Every stranger I met, turned into a piece of furniture in this new space. Some were fleeting shadows, others became the steady foundation. I stopped fighting the crowd and started observing the dance.  The slow transformati...

 There is a distinct, quiet shift that happens the moment you blow out twenty-one candles. It’s a realisation that there is officially no escape, the safety net of ‘I am just a kid’ vanishes, and suddenly you caught entirely in the circle of growing up. There is no going back. It’s an ironic milestone isn’t it? We spend our entire childhood sprinting towards adulthood, only to reach it and realise we have inherited a mountain of things, we never actually asked for. Lately, life has been throwing a lot at me. Turning 21 came with a sudden rush of responsibilities. Some amusingly mundane, others deeply depressing. Adulthood isn’t a single open door. It’s a series of heavy gates. You have to learn to push open yourself. You start navigating the complex realities of life. You become a person that people out there actually rely on, the one who has to make the hard decisions and face the emotional shifts within a family. Someday it feels disgustingly empowering, other day it feels entir...

 There is a distinct, quite terro r in the final days of being 19 four months leading up to it. I carried a heavy invisible backpack filled with questions I didn’t know how to answer. What does an adult look like? How am I supposed to suddenly know how to navigate university, life responsibilities, and the share weight of the future? I half expected that when midnight arrived on my birthday, a sudden wave of profound maturity would wash over me neatly replacing my teenage anxiety is with a flawless manual on “How to be a grown up.” But then… THE CLOCK STRUCK TWENTY. The sky didn’t change colours. My room looked exactly the same. I woke up the next morning and I realised a jarring truth. I was officially a twenty-something, but I still felt entirely like me . The world hasn’t shifted overnight, but the threshold has been crossed. The adulting I had spent months dreading had officially begun, not with a loud band, but with the quiet ticking of a clock. Shedding a Twelve-Year Skin B...

 Hey, welcome to my little brain dump. I think about my teens a lot. Specifically the era before I turned 18, when my mind was completely free, zero thoughts and an empty head. I was dependent on everyone around me. Life was just a series of random peaceful days where my biggest crisis was probably deciding what to watch next. And then the “Pre-20s effect” slowly started creeping in. It wasn’t a sudden slap in the face. It was more like a slow software update that my brain absolutely wasn’t ready for. By the time my actual 20s arrived? Game over. Ever since then my mind has spiralled so hard it makes a little rusty metal spring look perfectly straight.  But honestly? If you can’t laugh at the most dramatic, existential-crisis moments of your own youth, what can you do? So here I am. No professional writing skills, no grand wisdom, no solid five-year plan. Just a girl, a planner that I try my best to fill out, and absolutely no idea what the heck is going on.  Consider thi...