What’s My Age Again? (A Letter To All You Soon To Be 23 Year Olds)

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It’s true, nobody likes you when you’re 23.

It’s the night before my birthday. I’m having a grand old time drinking wine and rejoicing in the fact that for 7 hours and 9 more minutes I am still technically 22. That’s right, I’m celebrating the last scrapes I have left of being 22, those last few pathetic crumbs of this last year, before my life turns to shit.

It’s a well-known fact that when you turn 22, life is great. You’re no longer the freshman of the bar scene, and it’s a mad rush to post a music video of Taylor Swift dancing around in cat ears on each of your friend’s Facebook walls when it’s their birthday. You probably just graduated college, or you’re about to, and after a lifetime of classes and homework you’re looking forward to a year of fucking around and making that PAPER in whatever tip or commission based job you’ve lined up. Because fuck it, you already have that degree. Time to party.

So like Taylor Swift, you’re on top of the world strolling into nightclubs like you own the place and jumping into pools with your clothes on because you feel like it, and because you have nothing better to do than make fun of your exes and eat breakfast at midnight.

And then one day you wake up and realize, you eat breakfast at midnight because you’re not a real person, and eggs are pretty much the only thing you can afford right now. Also, that song fucking sucks.

You’ll probably get really excited about “real life” and make a shit ton of horrible life choices. Like work at a restaurant for a year. Or date a deadbeat with no car for a while. Or cheat on your boyfriend with his boss. You’ll probably quit your job and lose friends and drink too much, because you’re in “real life” now.

And then after you basically make a series of terrible decisions, you’ll be forced a little further into actual adulthood. Into a reality slap. You’ll wake up one morning and realize, “oh shit, wait, this is horrible. This is real life.

I don’t know about you, but real life is NOT 22. You don’t know about me, and neither do I because nobody likes you when you’re 23.

This is not a warning. If you’re feeling 22, live it up. This is your year. Make mistakes. Do whatever you want. Get drunk and party. Tear shit up. Put Taylor Swift on repeat. That’s what you’re supposed to do.

And on the eve of your 23rd birthday, Google search “songs about being 23.” It will prepare you for the next morning when you wake up out of your red wine induced coma that you ventured into alone while pet sitting your roommates cats who isn’t even here, sitting in your new apartment in the new city you just moved to because life at 22 didn’t really pan out the way you thought it would, and you have no friends and a job that you don’t like. 

The good news: Whatever. I’ll take Blink 182 over T-Swift any damn day. Also, I Googled songs about being 24. There aren’t any, really. I think we get to write that one ourselves.