The Best Years of Your Life
Peeling back the layers on our least favorite lies to twentysomethings
Outside submission by Morgan Merriam
Illustrations by Grace Matson
Since before you were a glimmer in your mother’s eyes, a story has been stewing, one of what we’re told will be the best years of our lives.
As the story goes, your twenties are the time to make your forever friends, find the love of your life, lay the foundation for your foreseeable future, and generally be the hottest, coolest and most unapologetic version of yourself.
We’ve made movies about it — books, too. We booze and reminisce. And when it comes time, we will probably help spin the tale for the next generation.
Unfortunately, though, it’s all bullshit.
In reality, as twentysomethings step into adulthood for the first time, the world is less their oyster, and more their pinball machine, smacking them back and forth with new obstacles and responsibilities.
FRIENDSHIPS, LONELINESS AND THE COLLEGE EXPERIENCE
Drew Kaufman, 28, is what he likes to call a Bellingham celebrity — a Belebrity.
Standing at 6 feet, 6 inches, decked in tattoos, with a mop of curly, red locks down his back, Kaufman is certainly hard to ignore.
Lounging in a stiff wooden chair at Caffe Adagio, where he has been a regular for four years, Kaufman is comfortable, waving his hellos to every passerby that gives him a smile.
With his hair tucked neatly back in a claw clip, Kaufman’s glasses frame a look of soft sadness.
“I’m lonely all the time,” he said, smiling.
During an hour-and-a-half conversation, Kaufman was recognized by name by two employees, stopped to chat with two old friends passing through, and met a stranger, who within the hour was reminiscing with him about his old band days and even asked Kaufman to teach his wife guitar.
And he’s lonely.
Once upon a time though, Bellingham was just what Kaufman needed. After moving here six years ago to attend Western Washington University, he even thought it refreshing.
Though delayed compared to the classic fresh-out-of-high school route, at 21, Kaufman was doing what was expected of the average young adult. He went to college, graduated and settled down in good ol’ Bellingham, The City of Subdued Excitement.
In what we often think of as comfort, Kaufman was itching.
“I've really hit complacency these past couple years,” he explained.
This wasn’t what he wanted. And that feeling isn’t necessarily a special one among twentysomethings.
In a study of loneliness in emerging adulthood published by SageJournals, one of two key themes found were “expectations about a typical emerging adult’s life,” a.k.a. ‘that’s how my life should be’ mentalities.
This, classically, was paired with loneliness and development as ‘a part of growing up.’
Ouch.
Craving what he couldn’t have here, Kaufman, in one of his classic leaps of faith, came up with a solution: he applied for a visa and bought a one-way ticket to Australia, clear across the globe.
For those of us who aren’t looking to buy a ticket to ride though, where do we go?
Back at Kaufman’s alma mater, sneakers slap down on red brick as prospective college students step onto campus for the first time on a not-too-cold and cloudy day. These young hopefuls are a mix of buzzing and bored as they follow their mic'd-up guide like newborn puppies, taking in what might be their new home for the next four years.
Whether they’re doe-eyed or over it, this bunch has a choice to make, and right now they’re presented with the most shined-up and alluring version of Western their tour guides can manage.
Unless you peaked in high school, your college days are meant to be the best years of your life. But according to the Mental Health Foundation, 60% of 18 to 24-year-olds “have felt so stressed by the pressure to succeed that they have felt overwhelmed or unable to cope.”
Down brick walkways toward the far end of campus, Heather Freeman, a psychologist at Western’s Counseling & Wellness Center, sits in a green chair, in a green jumpsuit with a smile on her face. Her composure is schooled but genuine, nodding and “mhm-ing” the day away as the sound machine just outside the door plays, letting her clients pretend, for just a moment, that they aren’t on campus.
“There’s a lot of pressure to do college in a certain way, or that college needs to be a certain thing,” Freeman said. “[But] college doesn’t necessarily have certainty … and I think that that’s a huge, difficult shock.”
This point in your life is what Spring Source Psychological Center, a Chicago-based therapy practice, refers to as “a modern rite of passage.” A time when you are meant to blossom from adolescence to adulthood and carve the path for which the rest of your life will follow.
“I think that there is sort of this struggle between conformity and being true to yourself and what’s best for you,” said Emily Feek, a former resident advisor at Western. “And that’s a hard thing to figure out at any age.”
Bjorn Kraus, 23, has been ‘figuring it out’ for the past four years, and they look back at the college experience as a secret society, one that seemed to have forgotten Kraus's invite.
“It felt like [my peers] were getting the experience that I wanted, but I didn't really know how to get,” Kraus explained.
After arriving at Western during an active pandemic, Kraus tried to keep their expectations low, but after story after story from parents, friends and party school animals at Washington State University, they couldn’t help their excitement for what would be.
“My expectations were meeting people, making friends, finding a partner, doing well in classes, you know, making class friends, so on and so on,” Kraus explained. “Then lots of other influences, kind of like [threw] that off.”
Kraus couldn’t keep up with the pressures, the imagined scenarios and the perfect ideal of the college experience. Duped and drowning in expectations, Kraus did the only thing they knew to do: “I changed my expectations.”
“You have to make the most of what you're given, even if you're given not a whole lot,” Kraus said. “You have to reach out and grab it.”
So step by step, they adjusted.
“Not everyone's going to have a great college experience, and that's not what everyone told me.”
Kraus is neither the first, nor the last to be overwhelmed with the heavy realities that come with your ‘best years.’ No matter how you choose to cope, whether that’s by changing your perspective or your zip code, Abby Senuty, a career counselor at Western, has a word of advice.
“Sometimes when we’re overwhelmed, we can feel paralyzed by all of the possibilities. Taking small steps to explore, plan, or try things is better than taking no steps,” Senuty wrote in an email. “Momentum needs to be balanced with sustainability.”
TO BE LONELY OR TO BE LOVED
If you went through the American public school system, chances are you’re familiar with William Shakespeare.
According to a survey of 400 high school English teachers nationwide, Romeo and Juliet “appears in roughly 93% of all ninth grade classes,” making it the most frequently taught of all his works.
Just 13 and 16 years old themselves, these star-crossed lovers set the tone early on for high school freshmen across the country to begin looking for the one they love.
To their credit, though, many succeed, with 57% of teenagers (ages 12-17) regularly dating, and one-third of them having a steady partner, as cited by Linda Brannon in her book Gender: Psychological Perspectives.
But what about those who don’t quite make it into that demographic?
Avery Almquist, 20, has wanted to fall in love since he was 4 years old.
“I was kind of hopeless ever since then,” Almquist said. “I've had certain people who I was interested in. [I’ve been on] what you could call dates, but they always fell through for one reason or another.”
Two-thirds of incoming college students want “opportunities to learn about sex and relationships” across the academic year, according to the Higher Education Policy Institute, and Almquist was certainly one of them.
Having come to Western without the experience of the romantic love he so desperately sought, Almquist was hopeful for what his college years would bring.
“I was figuring that ‘OK, my freshman year of college, I’m sure I’ll probably meet someone.’”
So far though, Almquist has been shit out of luck, and he’s not the only one.
Much like Almquist, Ella Boldt, 20, is a self-identified hopeless romantic. Boldt blames it on reading too many romance novels, and frankly, with her curly blonde locks and tortoise-framed glasses, she looks like just the girl who would star in one.
Boldt has consumed stories of love — books, movies, you name it — her whole life.
“Ever since I was a little girl, that’s the movies that I watched. I had this idea of what high school would be like, of what my first relationship would be like. And I had this timeline in my mind,” Boldt grins, laughing at herself. “I am not following the timeline.”
According to Erik Erikson, a psychoanalyst who coined the term “identity crisis,” age 19 is the start of a developmental period he refers to as “intimacy vs. isolation.” As you might guess, this life stage is highly dependent on the development of romantic relationships, leaving young adults with two paths: to be lonely or to be loved. But of course, first, that involves figuring out how to be lovable.
During this stage, failures to thrive in these long-term, non-familial relationships often “lead to a sense of disconnection and estrangement in adulthood.”
“It does a lot to your psyche,” Boldt explained. “‘Oh my gosh, I'm not attractive, I'm not worthy to be in a relationship.’”
Though 37% of college students report having never been in a relationship, it's easy to feel outpaced by your peers.
“It felt like everyone that I met had been in a couple relationships already, and had all these experiences,” Boldt said. “I felt very behind.”
The pressure for twentysomethings to seek romance doesn’t stop once they're off campus, either. Talk to just about any family member over the age of 40, and it won’t take long for them to nudge you. Boldt’s mom is just one example.
“I had a friend that was going through a breakup, and I was telling [my mom] about it,” Boldt said. “She's like, ‘Ella, I just want you to experience heartbreak, I feel like it shapes you, you learn so much about yourself.’”
Though Boldt may be searching for her happy ending, it doesn’t seem like she’s all too interested in the aches, pains and other tropey-goodness it takes to get there — at least, according to her books. But maybe she’s on to something.
Romeo and Juliet, for one, met rather unsavory deaths for their love. And they aren’t the first whose young marriage didn’t quite turn out the way they’d hoped.
In fact, “60 percent of couples married between the age of 20-25 will end in divorce,” according to San Diego-based family law firm Wilkinson & Finkbeiner.
Among a crew lacking a fully developed prefrontal cortex, putting in the work it takes to make a relationship thrive may be too much to ask. This area of the brain, known as the personality center, is “where we manifest our insight, foresight, and planning capabilities into the actions that define who we are.”
Regardless of whether you’re gettin’ lovin’ or not, the pressures to have that special someone still linger.
“
College is the time to meet people, and it feels like sand [slipping] through my fingers,” Almquist explained. “Everything's passing by, that opportunity, that golden time to meet people.”
DROWNING TOGETHER
“I think twentysomethings receive some challenging — and at times conflicting — expectations about this chapter in their life,” wrote Senuty, in an email. “Remember that our worth as people is not solely defined by our productivity.”
As twentysomethings, we fight to do everything, be everything, but everything is simply not possible.
More than anything, we are trying to find our footing, wound up on ideas of the best decade of our lives, twentysomethings are released into a world of uncertainty, and yes, reality.
“Some people will fear that small amount of time, and desire eternity, but I absolutely do not,” Almquist said. “I think that the fact that we have so little time is what makes it special.”
The fact of the matter is, we’ve all been scammed. Every passing day of your twenties may not be sunshine and rainbows — hell, some days might not even be tolerable. But the years will pass, and we will make what we can of them.