Twenty Somethings

My whole life, I have deeply associated who I am with my potential and the possibilities my life holds.

I have always been passionate about everything I put my heart into. I’ve dabbled in various hobbies and interests, from acting and art to public speaking and writing to music. There was even a moment when I wanted to be a professional cosplayer (thank god I didn’t). But as I’ve gotten older, the social pressure to pick who I want to be and what I want to do has become overwhelmingly intense. Once I reached a certain age, it felt unacceptable for me to have such a wide variety of interests and hobbies. There is this overarching idea that older generations, and even sometimes my peers have, that you can only be one thing. And for me, categorizing myself as only one thing is essentially the same in my mind as limiting who I am and what I can do.

When I got to college as a fresh-faced 18-year-old, I had little life experience and no idea who I was or what I wanted. If you had asked me on move-in day back in 2020 what I honestly thought my life would hold, I would have smiled blankly and given a resoundingly timid “I don’t know!” But this answer was not socially acceptable. There is so much pressure to know exactly what you want to do and dedicate your entire existence to at an early age. And most of the time, as the years pass, you realize you probably would have liked something else more and become bitter and regretful.

I am terrified of this path. I am filled with the fear of regretting who I decided to be and what I chose to do. I truly care about so many different areas of life that deciding to dedicate my being to one thing feels incredibly restrictive of all that I am. I have an abundance of potential inside of me to do and experience amazing things in life. I could choose to be any number of things, but I also feel that I cannot pick just one thing to be because if I did, I would always be filled with the question of “what if” I had picked something else.

It seems all I am will never be able to fit just one category. While there are a bunch of things I could dedicate my entire life to, it feels like I would be ignoring all of the other things I care about and may one day regret not exploring all of my options. Deep down, I want to be a writer, yes, but I also want to be an actress and musician, a fashion designer, or a wife and mother. It feels impossible to have it all.

It reminds me of the fig tree analogy by Sylvia Plath, who is one of my favorite authors. If you are unfamiliar with this analogy, I’ll include an excerpt below.

“I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked… I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn’t make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.” -Sylvia Plath

The first time I read the whole quote, I burst into tears. It encompasses the way it feels to have so many possibilities in your life but be stuck frozen, unable to choose only one life. I am filled with fear and dread over the idea that I might just be sitting here, wasting time and being idle, when perhaps I should just go ahead and pick something. But I don’t want to. I don’t want to give up all that I care about for a straightforward existence that I might one day hate in the future.

It is impossible to be sure what path is the right one for me, and which will make me the happiest. And that’s the problem, isn’t it? I only get one life to do and experience it all. Why should I sacrifice all of these exciting and potential possibilities ahead of me for a plain or socially acceptable life? At the end of the day, I know I cannot be all I want to be. And if I do not decide soon, just like in the Plath excerpt, the opportunities ahead of me will wither at my feet.

Time is running short, and the people around me do not understand why I cannot just dedicate my life to one path. I feel the pressure from everyone around me to choose, yet I am frozen. I see my high school classmates graduating college to become nurses, lawyers, and business people. I see my brother moving to a new city to start a new job. My parents ask in family therapy when will I get an internship, and people ask at family events what I want to do with my life. But the honest answer, just like when I was 18, is ” I don’t know.” Perhaps I never will.