20 Things To Remember As You Navigate Your 20s

1. You will be hurt by those you least expect, because those we love and trust are always the most capable of hurting us.

2. You will learn the most from the people who hurt you, not from the people who don’t.

3. Friends can and will break your heart too, and nothing stings like betrayal from the one person you never doubted.

4. Loving and trusting somebody means arming them with a loaded gun, and for a while, you might hesitate to give anyone that kind of power.

5. Many people will hurt you, but some people won’t. Those diamonds in the rough make everything worth it.

6. You will fall in love. You will fall in love with him. You will fall in love with her. You will fall in love over and over again. You will fall in love with the way people’s eyes light up when they talk about their passions, the way they slowly open up to you about their past, and the way they tell you with glistening eyes that this city saved them.

7. You will fall in love with the little things, like street names, coffee shops, shortcuts, and views.

8. You will fall out of love. Things you once cared about will become irrelevant. You will go months without talking to people who once meant the world to you. That is ok. Changing is ok. 

9. Everything changes, especially the good things.

10. Your best friends will be the people you have only known for a short while. A few months, maybe a year, but it will feel like you’ve known each other a life time.

11. You will learn that sometimes, the people you’ve only known for a few months will make you feel more loved and alive than the people you’ve known your whole life.

12. Quality always beats quantity. The best thing for your soul is to surround yourself with people who are good for you and good to you.

13. Laughter, good company, and maybe a little wine. This is what your happiest moments are made of.

14. You should be taking way too many pictures, even though it’s out of fear of losing such precious moments in time.

15. Nothing lasts forever. There is something so beautiful about wanting nothing more than to capture a moment, to live frozen in time for just a little while longer.

16. Doors close. Doors slam. Doors disappear. Don’t continue to knock. Find an open one, or make one.

17. You might feel like you have no idea what you’re doing, but masterpieces are not planned. Vincent Van Gogh did not decide each and every stroke and color before he started to paint. You don’t have to have everything figured out, it’s ok to take it one step at a time, it’s ok to not know what you are going to do next, it’s all a part of creating your very own masterpiece.

18. Your life will change direction, probably more than once. Let it happen.

19. Growing pains are a real thing. Growth is uncomfortable, it is not easy, but avoiding it is detrimental. If it hurts, it matters.

20. It is necessary to let people go. It is okay to let people go. You are not a bad person for removing toxic people from your life. You are not a bad person for moving on from something that brought you pain. You are not a bad person for doing what is best for you. You are not a bad person for loving yourself enough to walk away from people, habits, and memories that do not build you up.