You’ve seen the TV shows. No matter what night of the week it is, a group of twenty-somethings seems to be sitting together on a coffee shop couch or in a booth at the nearest bar, or at the loft they’d in no way be able to afford in real life. They’re drinking and laughing, and often, engaging in some type of shenanigan.
And there you are, alone on your unmade bed in your messy studio, drinking wine direct from the bottle and sobbing because that never happens to you.
Or you’re with a group of people, but you’re all on your phones and the most connection you have is when the person to your left retweets you during the commercial break.
Maybe you spend a lot of time alone. Or you spend a lot of time working. Or you spend a lot of time with others, but it doesn’t look like TV.
If everything looked like TV, we’d be in a zombie apocalypse with a Republican president named Fitz and vampires everywhere you look.
It’s hard to remember that there’s no right way to do your twenties. Just because a group of five or six friends has spent every night in either a coffee shop or bar for almost 20 years, doesn’t mean what you’re doing is wrong.
It’s okay to still be in school. It’s okay to not be sure what your friend group looks like. It’s okay to worry that when you finish school in May and get a job who knows where, some of your relationships will end (they probably will, sorry love). It’s okay to be scared.
In fact, please be scared. Be nervous about what comes next. Not because I want you to develop an ulcer, but because – in my experience – the more nervous you are, the better something is going to be. I was terrified to move to North Carolina, and it has been the best decision I ever made.
It hasn’t been easy. I haven’t always loved what is going on in my life or felt like I have the support system I need, but I have loved being here. I have learned so much and grown a lot. And you will too.
Those of us that are in our twenties, we grew up on Friends. We spent our high school and college years watching How I Met Your Mother. We lived and died with Glee.
And as great and fun as those shows are, they’re not real life. I can’t afford to spend every night of the week in a bar (trust me, I’ve tried it), or even a coffee shop. I can barely afford the studio apartment I’m living in, I would never be able to afford a vaulted-ceiling two room apartment on the salary I’m making (and neither would any of those people, sorry). And I have great people in my life, but our relationships don’t look like the ones on those shows. Some weeks my best friends think of me as their best friend, and other weeks they have someone else they spend more time talking to. I don’t have a Monica, or a Marshall, and it’s okay if you don’t either.
In six months, I will graduate from my master’s program and then, a few weeks later, turn 26. There’s no way my life is going to look the way that I thought it would when I turned 26. At this rate, I’m going to be living the way TV twenty-somethings live when I turn 30. Or never.
If your life doesn’t look like an episode of Friends, that’s 100% okay. Embrace your life the way it is. You’ll only better for it.
And if you really, really want it to look like your favorite TV show, then grab five of your friends and go to the nearest coffee shop. There’s nothing stopping you.