Confessions of a TwentySomething Drama Queen

Everything seems so bleak of late. It's like there's an unshakeable cloud of gloom hanging over my head, making life seem so dismal and listless.

I wouldn't call it depression. I don't believe it is that serious. Besides, it's not as if I am totally without some happiness. I feel happiness everytime I see LittleSumo smile and laugh. I feel happy for friends who have so much to celebrate: weddings, impending births, graduations, etc. And it's not as if I had to force myself to be happy for them.

I really am sincerely happy for them. Yet, sincere as it is, it is not truly encompassing. It's more like 'specific happiness', or 'assigned happiness'. Whenever I think of them, I feel happy for them, but that happiness doesn't spill into other aspects of my life. Everything else remains gray and lifeless. It's as though my life is a movie played in black and white, with the occasional spurts of coloured scenes interspersed between. Reminiscent of the movie 'Pleasantville', or more accurately, a dysfunctional first-generation colour TV.

I read an article once, some years back, about young adults now experiencing "quarter-life crisis". Is this what it is?

Nowadays, there seems to be a period of crisis for every stage of your life.

First, you have "Birth", where you are expelled from your comfortable, peaceful first home ever into this cold, cold climate where everything is noisy and doesn't make sense.

When you are a toddler, you have your "Terrible Twos Stage", where nothing makes much sense and you try to rationalise it the best you can in order to survive in this world by (reasonable) (adult) standards.

When you grow older, you become a "PreTeen", where you're about to enter teenage-hood, and you don't understand much about that, but you try your best to make it all make sense.

Then there's "Puberty". Let's not even go there.

Previously, only the "Mid-Life Crisis", "Turning 30 *gasp!*" and "Life Begins at 40 (thus labelled to acknowledge the (vain) attempt to console yourself)" syndromes were identified.

Having identified all that, you realise that not much of your life is left crisis-free. The only heretofore unexplained chunks remaining were: childhood, your teens, your twenties, and old age.

In your childhood, nothing made much sense, but who cares? You were too busy having fun playing masak-masak, mermaids, Barbie or kejar-kejar.

In your teens, everything made sense, because you already know everything. Naturally. D'uh!

Having said that, is it really any wonder that many adults wish they were either children or teenagers again?

In senile-dodderism, I have a feeling that I'll be too old to care, because I would already know everything, but despite my great wisdom, I would still find that nothing makes sense, but to hell with it all, I want to crochet my doily first, and feed my cat, and, and ... do I have a cat? Wait, where am I? I don't remember ever seeing this sofa befo .. zzZzZzzZZzz .....

So that leaves only your Twenties for you to finally, at at least ONE point in your life, be (relatively) carefree, to understand it all, or maybe accepting that you understand nothing but are at total peace with that, and just to enjoy life as it is, no more, no less.

THEN they come up with "Quarter-Life Crisis"????!!? Why can't these psychologists leave us the hell alone??!! Must they take EVERYTHING away from us?!!!

*sigh*

God, I just decided on the title for this post, and have just realised that I AM A TWENTYSOMETHING!! Before I know it, I'll be 30 .. then 40 .. and then I'll have a chin hanging to my boobs, and boobs hanging to my toes!! Oh tidaaaaaaak!!!.....

Seriously, though. For me, it's this feeling of .. restlessness. Of inadequacy. Maybe that's the right word. Inadequate. Everything feels .. lacking, and the harder I try, the more that 'something' eludes me, so much so that I have become so sick of trying and have decided to go the absolute extreme contrary and stubbornly do nothing at all. And perhaps that is the root of the restlessness.

It also seems like I am not the only one. I see my mood(s) reflected in most of my other friends in the same age group, in varying degrees.

Will life actually be easy at some point? Will there ever be a point in my life where I can say, "I have it all, I want for nothing more." Will I ever be able to shake off this bleakness? Will it ever lift? Or will it never go away, and instead gradually, insidiously assimilate itself into my personality, resulting in my becoming more embittered as I grow older.

Is that why old people generally seem so bitter, so sad, so forlorn? Or will Life be more like a wave, where we'll experience highs and lows like the ebbings of the tide? I was going to say like a sine curve, but that seemed a little engineering-dorkish. What to do? Once a dork, always a dork, I guess. *G*

Will things ever make any sense?!!