Twenty, Funny, and Crying

            13 Going On 30 was one of my favorite movies when I was (you guessed it) 13. In case you some how missed out on this Jennifer Garner gem, let me lay it out for you. Jenna (Jennifer Garner) is an awkward 13-year-old desperate to fit in. After a bad party experience involving Mean Girls-esque pranks, Jenna finds herself locked in a closet with a doll house and some “magic wishing dust,” both given to her by her chubby-yet-lovable best friend, Matt. Jenna recalls an article she recently read in her favorite magazine, Poise, entitled “Thirty, Flirty, and Thriving.” In her “personally victimized by Regina George” stupor, Jenna wishes on the magic dust to be “thirty, flirty, and thriving.” She wakes up to be just that. A now 30-year-old Jenna, who works at Poise magazine, tracks down her long-lost BFF Matt, who just happens to turn into Mark Ruffalo. This movie has given me extremely high expectations for my thirties (especially since my dream is to work at Glamour magazine and none of my friends even resemble Mark Ruffalo.)

            All Ruffalo daydreams aside, this fake Poise article got me thinking. If I want to be “thirty, flirty, and thriving” in my thirties, what do I want to be now? Having just entered my twenties this past Monday, I wish I could simply replace “thirty” with “twenty” and have this mantra describe my current state. Unfortunately, that is not the case. Despite my best efforts to be “flirty,” the boys in my age group are just that: boys. I have yet to meet a male my age that could be described as a “man.” As for the “thriving” part, that only applies to me if “thriving” means leaving a party early to go get dollar slice pizza. After racking my brain to come up with a set of words to describe my life at this point, I think I finally hit the jackpot.

            “Thirty, flirty, and thriving,” meet “twenty, funny, and crying.”

            Taylor Swift says it best in her song “22”, describing the age as “happy, free, confused, and lonely at the same time.” While the statement seems redundant, it hits the nail on the head when it comes to defining being in your twenties. In your twenties, your life is in a bunch of pieces. Some of these pieces are great. You may have a killer GPA and awesome friends. Other pieces, not so much. Your love life may be non-existent and you may cringe whenever someone asks you the dreaded “What do you want to do with your life?” When your pieces (or in some cases, shambles) are so different, how could you have anything but mixed emotions?

            That’s where “twenty, funny, and crying” comes in. I am not using “funny” in the sense that all people in their twenties are funny (even though I do think I’m hilarious.) I am using it to describe a twenty-something’s life in general. There are times when my life is literally funny, such as a 2 a.m. study session with friends when Starbucks closes and the delirium sets in, or a wild night out with equal parts dumb decisions and dancing. Then there are times when my life is comical in the “my life is a joke” sense. All of my friends are out on dates and I have to go see a class-required play on Valentine’s Day? My life is a joke. The door is jammed and I find out I am locked INSIDE my own apartment, a few minutes before I need to be out the door? An even bigger joke. But that’s the thing about being in your twenties. You learn to see these happenings as a joke and you laugh them off.

            But in some cases, when you’ve done all the laughing you can do, a few tears sneak their way in. All of the confusion, misdirection, and disorientation that comes with being in your twenties is enough to make you lose it every once in a while. Whether it is roommate issues or getting turned down for a position you really wanted, sometimes a good cry is the only cure. It can be hard when it seems as though everyone around you has their life completely together while you are still trying to put together those pieces. Yet, these are other opportunities to laugh it off. When you’re in your twenties, sometimes you have to laugh when you cry and cry when you laugh.

            So yes, my peers and I may be emotional, wild, and lost messes, but that comes with the territory of being in your twenties. To go back to Taylor Swift’s masterpiece that is “22”, your twenties are both “miserable and magical.” I am attempting to find my way through life, rolling with the punches, and trying to not get too beat up along the way. I don’t know which direction my life is going or where I’ll be in five years, but I do know I am having fun trying to figure it out. And to me, that is thriving.