16 Painfully Honest Truths You Will Learn While Navigating Your Twenties

1. Your parents were right about ALMOST EVERYTHING. The scope of everything ranging from why you should eat your veggies daily to why you cannot binge watch TV because you’d be late for work the next morning.

2. Almost NOTHING you learned in school or college can help you deal with the roller coaster ride that your twenties are… except maybe landing a job that pays the bills.

3. You’re a kid trapped in the body of an adult and are suddenly hearing words like mortgage, investments etc. being thrown at you from nowhere (Again education system, thank you for all the knowledge that you did not care to pass on).

4. Most of the stuff that you did fret about in your teens really doesn’t matter now. I mean, come on, the person you had a crush on probably doesn’t even remember you now!

5. Whoever said growing up was a trap was probably right. All those movies glorifying how freeing adulthood was probably forgot to include the responsibilities part.

6. That being said, you do get to do things you like at the cost of being solely responsible for it. You discover that running back to your parents every time you screw up is not a valid option any longer.

7. You start off your twenties with a 100 close friends that narrow down to 20 by the time you’re 25. By the time you’re 30 if you’re lucky you can count the ones you can call at 4 A.M. on your fingers.

8. It is amazingly humbling to eat the first thing you cook because unless you’re Martha Stewart it’s going to be awful. Also, food does start counting as a priority when you’re living away from home and have nobody to feed you at regular intervals.

9. Not everybody is going to have the time for you irrespective of the length of your contact list on Facebook or Whatsapp. People are going to move away as you (and they) evolve. Down the line, it will be okay (even if it doesn’t seem so now).

10. Social media is a big hoax and an even bigger dampener on your already low self esteem. Instagram-filtered lives and Facebook posts are going to repeatedly convince you of how terrible you are at being an adult. It will seem like you’re the only one on board the sinking ship even though you do know better. You will continually question your own worthiness till one day you actually put all your knowledge into practice and start ignoring.

11. Ditto for what people think about you.

12. However bad things may seem, they DEFINITELY can get worse. On the flip side, they can get better too. But it’s always safe to prepare like we’re going to be on the former side.

13. A lot of unwanted advice will be thrown at you simply for the reason that it is free (Also, because not a lot of people listen to their own advice). It is extremely imperative to pick what works for you.

14. Nothing people say to you is a reflection of who you are. Also, on a side note: it will probably take some people more time than their twenties to discover this.

15. As cliché as this sounds, the most important relationship in the world is the one you have with yourself. You could wish for a million things — to shed those last 10 pounds, to have a perfectly dazzling smile or to not be such a klutz. But at the end of the day when the lights go out (and you’re staring at the ceiling fan wondering whether you’re going to make it anywhere close to that 14-year prodigy who invented some new algorithm to make our lives simpler) you’re going to be the only one you have. And at the risk of sounding scary, there are going to be many such moments in your twenties.

16. You will be fine.