Surviving the Quarter Life Crisis

I got a hair on my chin two days before I turned 20... I remember thinking my life was over. I was no longer a teenager and was certain that before I knew it I would be drawing my pension with a full on beard.

I was mortally afraid of entering my twenties and spent my final days as a teenager believing that any kind of frivalous and immature behaviour would have to stop. I had my twenties all planned out; I would finish university and get a well paid job, buy a house, get engaged, get married and have children and be back on the career ladder before I was thirty. And I pretty much spent the majority of the past five years adhering to this plan...

I graduated and did my teaching PGDE. I bought a house with my long term boyfriend and the next logical step was marriage and children. However, as I approached 25, even though I was sticking to my plan, I began to panic. I kept counting the years I had left in my twenties. I became obsessed over how the next five years of my life were going to pan out. I started unnecessarily stressing about my biological clock and checking how old celebrities were when they had their first child. I fretted over how "we" were ever going to afford to get married, have children and buy a bigger houses. I compared myself to my parents, to people around me and ultimately at the end of it all I decided everything I thought I wanted, I didn't.

When you are younger 25 seems like a very old age. However, once I became a "quarter of a century" I started to re-evaluate my life. I felt bored and more importantly I felt trapped by the expectations I had placed upon myself. I also realised that while I loved my partner dearly I was beginning to resent him for the things that I had put aside in order to achieve what I thought was the norm.

And so I left my boyfriend and our home and moved back in with my parents. It has been an interesting, emotional and fun five months and this blog is going to chart the Dos & Don'ts of surviving a quarter life crisis as well as tit bits from my life here and there.