23 Soul-Crushing Truths About Being 23

1. Life has suddenly turned into a race to out-achieve your peers–from everything to doing cool trendy activities on the weekends, to starting a 401K.

2. At least one major cultural trend went by without you having the slightest idea what it was.

3. You spend a good deal of time laughing at the horrifying reality that someone you know is responsible for molding the minds of a classroom of children.

4. You’re not sure what’s more difficult; thinking about doing your own taxes, or making a new “adult friend.”

5. You’re old enough to know everything, but too young to actually know anything.

6. Upon running into people you’re attracted to, you’ve begun to check for a wedding ring. The first few times you did this, a little part of you died inside.

7. You’re beginning to realize that “biding your time” for your crush to come around might be permanently ineffective.

8. It does not seem financially feasible to have a child within the next fifteen years.

9. You’ve outgrown drinking terrible-tasting alcohol, but can’t yet afford the good stuff.

10. You’ve started to qualify your age with what year you graduated college, which seems inherently wrong. Someone you know keeps saying how “weird” this is.

11. Everyone you sleep with is a bit varied on the sexual experience scale, and you’re not yet old enough to disregard being “too above” or “too below” someone in that realm.

12. You’re not sure how many more years you’ve got until you can no longer be proud of the fact that you like bands like All Time Low.

13. You’ve only got a few more years until you eat fast food without tremendous repercussions.

14. For dudes, balding and/or grey hair might actually start becoming a thing. For girls, well, I don’t know…but I’m sure there’s some terrible shit going on.

15. You’re too old to be the age of the Jennifer Lawrence-esque celebrity that you said you were totally gonna be 7 years ago.

16. Five minutes from now, you’ll probably get really tired for absolutely no reason.

17. With the amount of stuff you need to get done, a drug addictions is starting to seem, however dangerous, somewhat practical.

18. Your social life seems to center around drinking, even though you and everyone you know fucking hates drinking.

19. Nobody over the age of 30 has ever taken you seriously.

20. You’ve begun to lose friends for the sheer reason of no reason at all.

21. You’re beginning to identify less with pesky kids, and more with parents. And you actually say the word “pesky.”

22. You’re pretty sure all your thoughts are a giant cliche, you know they’ve all been voiced before, and you’re pretty sure any contribution you could make to society has already been contributed. Hashtag the struggle. *Drops mic.*

23.  You could identify all too well with the song that I don’t even need to bother to tell you the name of. Thought Catalog Logo Mark

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