Twenties.

I spent this weekend in Pittsburgh with M, and it’s beginning to feel like this is the normal of our lives. Four hours in the car on Friday and Sunday are routine. I’ve listened to more audiobooks than I ever thought I could handle and I’ve put more miles on my car than my lease suggests I should. (BTW—If you haven’t read Tina Fey’s “Bossypants,” get it on audiobook. Listening to her read it is even more hilarious.) But as much as I’m getting used to trekking down I-70 and I-76, I can’t help but feel a little frustrated. I thought at nearly 25 I’d have more of my life together. I thought I’d be feeling successful in a job that I was good at. I thought I’d have a boyfriend that lived in the same city. I thought I’d have a huge group of fabulous friends. I thought I’d have better hair, weigh less, be more self confident and more spiritual. I certainly thought a lot of things. What I didn’t bargain for was a job that I usually don’t feel very competent in, a relationship stretched over nearly 200 miles, a love/hate (but mostly love) relationship with the McDonald’s drive-thru and a full cabinet of hair products that don’t work.

I don’t know if it was the freshness and promise of a new year that doesn’t look like it’s going to bring forth change in my life or the aggravation of not finding a parking spot in the South Side for FORTY MINUTES on Friday night after being in the car for five hours, but in a lot of ways, this weekend felt like the bottom. I was frustrated and angry and unhappy with the way my life felt. I want to move home; I want to buy a house; I want to live with M; I want to be better at my job; I want to be more graceful about all of it. Instead of spent Friday night in a snotty, bawling, angry mess, which just made M more frustrated with me and certainly didn’t help us get to the bottom of our problems.

I think a lot of us feel like we should be more together at this point. It’s been nearly three years since we graduated college. That should be enough time for us to mature, find the jobs we want, be the people we want to be, find the people we want to share our lives with, right? We should be marrying, buying houses, contributing to our 401k’s, working our way up the corporate ladder. Right? Now, please don’t think I’m knocking any of you who are indeed doing these things. Honestly, I’m jealous of you. Keep it up. But what I want to say to those of us who aren’t, is that we don’t need to worry. We have the rest of our lives to do all of these things. There’s no age limit on getting married, buying your first house, starting a family, opening a 401k (though I do encourage getting started on the last item as quickly as you financially can). What we don’t have the rest of our lives to do is grow up. To learn who we are. To learn how to move through our lives with grace. To explore on our own, make big mistakes, resolve said mistakes. Our twenties are a limited time for us to turn ourselves into the people we want to be, however we might get ourselves to that place, and though there’s not a set time-frame on growing up, there’s something to be said for entering our next decade with a sense of self and responsibility.

So for me, I think that means that I need to use this time in D.C. away from M to learn about myself. If I’m lucky, I’m going to be with him for the rest of my life, but I only have these moments to be out there on my own. I need to enjoy these moments, bask on my tiny, sunny porch reading a book and drinking champagne because I can. I need to watch Bravo and eat take-out food on weeknights because at this moment, I have no other responsibility. I need to go to museums, eat at fancy restaurants, walk around my neighborhood because I might not ever live in D.C. again. I’m going to be content in these moments, take them in, even though in the bottom of my heart, I wish I were buying a townhome in suburban Pittsburgh. There will always be time for that.

To living this moment,

Lia