When A Twentysomething Feels Old

i can’t wait for STDs

It’s awkward that I feel this way and I’m only 19…..

You’ll feel old when you move into an apartment and your new neighbors invite you downstairs for a few drinks. You go downstairs, surrounded by 8 or so people, and you think hey these people seem pretty cool until one girl starts chatting you up saying how she’d love to go out with you and your roommate for drinks and that she totally can because she has a fake ID…. HOLD UP how old are you? “Oh we’re all 19″. I’m 25. I say this and the response is “that’s not that bad, it’s not like you’re 30 or something…”

AHHHH i feel so old every day 

I will be your +1 Stephanie and I’ll +1 this article in Google Wave right now to prove my dedication.

I felt old at 25 but 26 has been easier so far. Thankfully, most people don’t invite me to weddings.

I was the only single girl at a Halloween party this weekend though. And the only one with bare legs. Yea, that felt old.

I turn 29 in a few weeks. Will officially be on the last leg of twentysomethingdom. I can relate to every single thing in this piece. Good gawd.

This is my life. My facebook feed is filled with wedding pictures and baby scans and Christening pictures, I’m often asleep before midnight and dieting is horrible. 

Blurgh, in my head I’m still 19, why must I be 23?

brb going to kill my old self

:( all of it.

I felt old this weekend when I dressed as Jack Skellington for Halloween and nobody seemed to know what the Nightmare Before Christmas was.  Somebody told me it was because that movie is “so old”. I’m freakin’ 23!

Believe me…you’re going to look back at that with nostalgia and realize, Damn, I was so young.

Now that I’m applying to jobs with my Master’s for positions that have been occupied by people with 20+ years of experience, I have to say I feel…young.  And naive.  I still have so much growing up to do even if I’m an ancient 26-years-old. 

only halfway there. yikes.

This is unfortunately timely, as my birthday is tomorrow and I feel incredibly, depressingly old.

I’m 29 and, honestly, the only thing that really makes me feel old is hearing 23, 24 year olds complain about how old they are. Unfortunately that’s what half of the articles on TC are.

you’ll start feeling old once you realize you can now relate to what adults were telling you all about before, and it’s as if somehow, you’ve been christened to the “grown ups club” eek.

I’m closer to 40 than 30, and trust me, it gets  better, MUCH better. Well, maybe not for women, but for men, definitely!

“When you spend the holidays with friends instead of family, it’ll feel
liberating but it’ll also feel like the death of something important,
something you never knew you’d miss.”

Yes.

Damn, kids, what’s your hurry? If you’re old as soon as you pass 21, you’re likely going to be old for a very long time indeed. If you’re lucky.

Once upon a time, I watched some ancient talk show where centenarians were being asked various questions about their lives. One of these was “Which was your favorite president?” Every single one said “FDR.” Being that this was way back in the 1980s (before most of you oldsters were even  born, I reckon), I suddenly realized that these people were already in their 60s when they voted in those elections; if you’re fortunate enough to live a long life, most of it will be spent being old. Really old. Not just the kind of old you’re currently experiencing, which is only old compared to being a child. Just sayin’.

Don’t believe the hype. It can get better for women, too- even over the age of 35!

Nothing is wrong with you.  Something is wrong with your friends.  You have the rest of your life not to be single.  Why rush into it at 23?

Wait. Am I the only one who doesn’t feel old? At 29?
It concerns me that people who are younger than me are feeling old. =/

That’s what I’m saying.  Some days I feel younger than I did when I was 23.  Mostly because I’m active.  My younger sister is always kvetching about feeling old and I want to shout “But you’re 26!!”

What is it about our generation (those of us in our twenties) that already feels so fucking old? I’m 24 and I feel goddamn ancient these days. I was talking to an old friend who probably fits into Generation Xish, and he was completely slackjawed at how i see the world.

“Dude, you’re twenty fucking four,” he said. “You’re not meant to have shit figured out. You’re meant to do crazy shit at that age. And not ‘I once lit my foot on fire LOL’ crazy, I mean “move to Portugal and declare yourself legally dead” crazy.”

Instead it seems like most people my age are just fucking exhausted. And I’m not even sure what we’re exhausted about. 

I felt old about two months ago when a friend and I were getting a drink at a bar after a concert. The girl he was talking to balked when she found out that we were both 28. She asked me how old I thought she was and I said, “I don’t know…23?” to which she balked even harder. I left.

You’ll feel old when you receive party invites that say, “bring a light sweater or jacket” from friends who once issued party invites that said “bring money to chip in on a keg.”

You’ll always feel old. I’m fucking 19 and I look at the freshman in the year below me and suddenly I’m nostalgic for my life just a year ago, when everything seemed easier and all that bullshit.

Happy birthday in advance!  I see a younger man in your future who makes you feel 21 all over again.  You meet him on Thought Catalog after he responds to one of your comments.

i actually feel younger when I don’t go out. it makes me feel like a little kid again. I kinda like it better most the time.

she was probably a moron.

ew. wtf. how can you marry someone at 23? that is disgusting. I sense some divorces in the future…

why would you spend the holidays with friends instead of family?!

People are living longer and longer….compared to 100 years old, 26 years old is nothing. you shouldn’t feel old.. don’t listen to these morons saying they feel old.

we live in a time of too much stimulation. we are constantly bombarded with information and news from different forms of social media and what not. i think hat is part of the reason young people feel old. it’s very anxiety provoking.

how does it get better? example??

I just turned 20 and I already swap coffee for tea and concerts for books.   And I do very much look forward to spending a day with relatives.  This article didn’t make me feel old.  It made me feel super lame.  

stop feeling old, dumbos

I have all the crotchety  jaded cynicism of a senior citizen but still no idea how to manage my finances or plan for my future. This is not fair.

Because sometimes either A) you’re too far away from home and
money/work/school/time prevents you from making it home for the
holidays, B) the majority of your family isn’t living anymore, or C) extended family is traveling to see their kids/other family in other parts of the world and you just can’t get everyone together like you could when you were younger.  There are lots of factors, and most are a result of getting older and/or life changing events in people’s lives.

Which I guess is something you can really only understand when you’ve reached that age.

I know how you feel. I’m 21 and I almost always choose tea and books over coffee and concerts. 

this is true

i’m english. i always choose tea over coffee.

You get perspective, stop caring so much about what people might think and relax :)

Yeah, I can’t do an 8ball, 2 tabs of cid, a fifth of rum, and smoke an eighth on Saturday anymore but I think that is kind of a good thing. I only feel old when I let myself feel old. It is the excuse of the times. The “I’ve been there done that”mentality we use to shun the experiences of the youngins’ or impress our contemporaries really accomplishes nothing more than realizing the world isn’t at our finger tips like we thought. We confronted our mortality and found someone else holds the puppet strings. Defeated, we resign ourselves to the pit of middle management or a string of failed attempts at building our own companies. Some may freelance while others just continue to burn the candle at both ends. Sooner or later you realize the futility of living the life your forebears taught you to want.  You either succumb to the the defeatist attitude of feeling feeble and elderly or you do what you truly want to do and give the finger to everything else. If your social experiences are limited to bars or the time between drinks then you feel old cause you don’t do anything new. Steal your minds and open the door you shut when you left academia. The STDs aren’t that great but they aren’t that bad either…hahahaha!

Why not for women? That just seems silly. 

 I feel like I went through a phase where I felt “old” and then I realized, oh yeah, I’m twenty four. I have my whole life ahead of me and old is a state of mind.

You’re like Nietzsche except Born Again and New Age and bland.

Yeah, how not for women, you asshole?

You start noticing you get old when teenagers scare you.

Amazing. I love your writing but this is the best I have read thus far.

What made me feel old was agreeing with 90% of that :)

You need to get some new friends, eat some Vitamin C and do some squats. This is weak, unless the light jacket is for the walk to the bar or to your buddy’s backyard where beer is also present.
I’ll be 25 in a week and this whole discussion is really confusing–it’s like ‘old’ is synonymous with doing your work and getting on with it, enjoying the bits in between. It isn’t, BTW. Old is stagnation, old is not reading the book or going to the concert. Old isn’t progression, it’s the end of growth.
Get drunk, do your work, have all the fucking fun in the world doing whatever makes you happy and above all stop whining. It makes you sound old.
Peace and love bitches,
M

“Get drunk, do your work, have all the fucking fun in the world doing whatever makes you happy and above all shut the fuck up about it (along with stories about the girl at work who isn’t as pretty or as smart as you).”

I’m assuming you were replying to the author of this article, because I have no idea what you’re talking about, but I agree with “Old is stagnation, old is not reading the book or going to the concert. Old isn’t progression, it’s the end of growth.” Well said.

Oh I’m sorry, yes–I was replying to the author. 

That was just beautiful. I think a person becomes old when they stop learning and seeking new experiences.

I’m 25 and feel trapped in some oblivion between childhood and adulthood… sometimes feeling frighteningly young, other times obscenely old. It’s all very perplexing. 

I wonder if there will be scientific research in the future on the twentysomething brain  like there is on the teenage brain and how we’re still growing in some way… centuries ago we WERE old because the average lifespan was 33, and people were considered grownups once they could biologically have children (aka the 12-year-old grownup of the year 1134 or something) Maybe it’s not even old we’re feeling, just confused? IDK

I found myself smiling after every line because really, I can relate to the entirety of it all.