The Meaning of your 20s

ShakiToni
ShakiToni
Jul 28, 2017 · 6 min read
starry night by LiseArt

I had just bolted from this house. I had my cool one moment, the next I felt suffocated. So I stepped out without saying anything to anyone. And I started walking, repeating:
Breathe In. Breathe Out
One foot forward. And then the next.
That’s all I need for now.

In this frenzy I thought about whether I was the only person who felt like this sometimes. As I tried to get a handle on what was happening, I realised that my 20’s SUCK! And they suck more because this is the part of my life when I should be certain, more solid and this unprecedented uncertainty at this juncture in my life made this even worse.
In our childhood we get to enjoy our bliss, the unburdened nature of children, but I’m all too aware that there are those who don’t even get to have a childhood.
Our teens are meant to be a clusterfuck. Between being swamped by hormones roiling in our bodies and being introduced to the limbo of: not child, yet not adult, my teens were filled with foggy days that would suddenly be crystal clear only to have the rug pulled from under me. The worst of the foggy days pushed me to the edge of suicide ideation; on clear days I approached enlightment (I would like to think my depressive episodes were triggered by reading Waiting for Godot to be honest). Nothing like asking a teen to read existentialism material to throw them off.
Let’s say I was saved by books in my teens. Many of my former classmates will complain a lot about the high school I attended and like all privileged kids are want to do as their prerogative (show me a perfect school I dare you). The library was my safe haven, and having teachers that weren’t handing down material verbatim pushed me to be critical (most public schools teach to cram and not to understand).

Growing up I thought my 20’s were meant to hold the solutions, but now I’m starting to wonder if this is where things unravel; a mid-life crisis arrived too soon. Maybe my aunts and brother had nothing figured out either. To say the least my 18 year old self would be mortified by how I have upended everything, like all judgmental teenagers are wont to do. My 8 year old self would probably be confused, but all too quick to forgive my shortcomings.
In these moments if I was the type to drink I would drink. If I was the type to pop pills I would. But I’m too much of a control freak. The more life seems to slip out of my grasp, the tighter the grip on everything else is, however delusional that maybe (things spill, they are messy, people are even more of a conundrum than ever and my social skills don’t help).


My 20's it turns out are for working with people who drive me up the wall, the pressure to have it all figured out or updated on the latest craze. In these cases I thank God for Google’s existence and then curse MTN’s internet speed. My 20’s are for wearing pantsuits to convince the next adult that I’m not too green for this job even though I would rather wear leggings from Monday to Sunday (there is still an ongoing debate with my mother about the suitability of attending church in anything other than a dress).
Maybe what is grounding in our 20’s is having replicas of ourselves running around and completely dependent on us.
All of a sudden it makes sense how our parents worked 16 hour jobs, 6 days a week in their 20's to make sure that we had a better future. They lived vicariously through us as we drained the life out of them. Then again my parents have always carried stoicism in their genes and living a big chunk of their lives as refugees has something to do with it. I don’t think I am as selfless.

My 20's are of emotions still raw from my teens as I wait for them to become numb once I hit my 30’s. But it’s not all doom because this is also the age when I get away with choosing a job just because I am “passionate” about it, and I can legitimately get up and travel without notice if I wasn’t constantly broke of course.
My job that I’m “passionate” about has allowed me to work with people I care about, on something I wholly believe in beyond the paycheck (though it is nice to get paid). So I Snapchat the hell out of my working space, tweet about my mother’s late night texts asking: “when are you getting home?” since I technically no longer have curfew. I focus on the process than the results because I know there is no such thing as midnight success (however much the little voice inside my head tells me so). I take pride in small things before I Instagram the big moments #withfilter (because we know Instagram is for the big stuff and WhatsApp stories is just cycling faster through pictures we would have posted as profile pictures.

My 20's are for reckoning with this afro-optimism age. The highlights in CAPS on the wonderful roads of Kigali and the refusal to recognise that a child came to my office dehydrated, sick with a one-way ticket to find a deadbeat dad. The refusal to recognise that both these realities can co-exist and that acknowledging them both is important. While we are making roads great again, free education won’t go down on an empty stomach.


My 20's are to be grateful to friends who still ask: “How are you?” even when you spent an entire day together. My 20's are for rolling out of bed at 11am on Saturdays and my mother greeting me with: “tea in the flask, bread in the cupboard”. My 20's are of heartbreak, of potential baes ghosting me on social media, of turning down unexpected roads to avoid my ex. Relationships are NOT romcom-like because movies end after 1 hour and 30 minutes and this feels more like a series (season finale: does he chase me through an airport? we’ll find out). My 20's are for Sunday brunch with bae where I constantly make better food choices on the menu (I just had to brag about it because I rarely beat him at anything else).
My 20's are for night phone calls with my brother on his faith and I recognise why he is the saner one of us. I realise that my sister and I will have our good days and not so good days. That she will forgive me when I fail to pull her back from that cliff and accept the bandages for the bumps and bruises on the way.

My 20's are turbulent and exhilarating; to be excited before apathy sets in. Maybe our 20's can truly be depicted by hurtling motorcycle rides with near death experiences where we swear off these motos only to turn around and flag another one down because that is life. (Let’s also take a moment to agree that Coca-Cola’s latest ad to chill with a coke in a traffic jam is bananas, What we want to do during a traffic jam is to side sweep each other and smirk when we find a ‘faster’ route home).

So in my closing thoughts I leave you with the wise words of Lukas Graham: “Soon we’ll be 30 years old yada yada yada” the point is soon we’ll be 30 and if our friends rushing to the altar is anything to go by that’s a new chapter that holds its own responsibilities. So drop that façade when your friend asks: “How are you doing?” and reply: “It freakin sucks right now!” followed by a bust of laughter as you return to conversing about something you don’t know much about, but clearly have a lot of opinions on.

ShakiToni

Written by

ShakiToni

Avid Reader. Black Feminist. Storyteller. || I can’t cook for nothing but I would make a great judge on TopChef || Finding the Profound in the Mundane||

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