Quarter-Life Crisis?

In the year most of my group of friends turned 20, one of my male (very metrosexual) friends, rather than being excited was quite despondent about leaving his teen years. He loudly bemoaned to all his friends that he was, shock horror, half way to forty. I laughed at the time and in fact ever since on his birthday have reminded him that he's half way to some horrible age. This friend's birthday is in January, whereas mine is in December, so every year it goes from being a joke about him to a cruel reality for me. For the first couple of years of this, each year on my birthday I brushed it aside, but the older I got, the more it started to actually hit home that I was indeed halfway to, well, the half way point of my life (if I'm lucky enough to make it to 100 that is). It wasn't until my 24th birthday that it hit home - I was officially mid-20's, and the following year would hit 25, the magical quarter-life year. It was this that sowed the seed of my quarter-life crisis, which took root and grew like crazy in the fertile soil of my insecure thoughts leading up to my 25th birthday last year. It was somewhere in the middle of the time between my 24th and 25th birthday that I first heard the term 'quarter-life crisis'. At the time of hearing the phrase, I thought what most people probably think - "nonsense!". But in the weeks leading up to my birthday, I found myself in the middle of a very real life crisis.

Type the words quarter life crisis into google, and the first page is a wikipedia entry, so straight away you know this is a popular phenomenon. The page tells us that a quarter-life crisis (QLC) describes the period of life following the major changes of adolescence, typically the years between 20 and 30, and is widely recognised among professional psychologists as a rising issue for young people. The page lists 16 emotional symptoms typifying the crisis, and reading through them was like reading a summary of the diary I never got around to keeping. Wikipedia also explains to me that this is partly caused by the changing financial and professional roles typically experienced in this period of a person's life. As for how to deal with this, Wikipedia is strangely quiet - a couple of books are recommended reading, but that's about it. The second entry is a website, www.quarterlifecrisis.com. Ok, if Wikipedia and my dread about my upcoming birthday hadn't convinced me, the fact that it's a domain name... well, now it definitely exists. This website tells me that the term was coined by a woman called Abby Wilner in 1997 after she graduated and felt unsure about what to do with her life. Apparently for her the answer was to write a couple of books to help others deal with her phenomenon, not, as one would expect, to find a job in the field she had spent several years studying (although the site doesn't mention what she studied, so perhaps she did indeed study new psychological phenomenon). Unfortunately, the site seems to be more about marketing the books, with the odd forum for QLC'ers to talk about their problems. No help there. The rest of the search results don't help much either.

So, there I was, about to turn 25 and feeling less than enthusiastic about it. There's a commonly held assumption that those experiencing a mid-life crisis generally will do something drastic such as change career, take a sea- or tree-change, buy a sportscar, or leave their partner for someone half their age. It doesn't really translate into a QLC. I'm just starting out in my career and love it, although I do wish I could advance faster (apparently a symptom of the QLC). Having lived both in a smaller town and on the coast, before the city I'm in now, I'm happy to stay here for a while - I would love to move back to the coast, but career-wise there's nothing there for me until I advance, and really it's only an hour's drive away anyway. I can't afford a sportscar or the insurance, and to be honest am very fond of my little barina with pink seatcovers anyway and would be way to nervous driving something expensive. As for dating someone half my age, that's just wrong at any age really let alone 25, and I'm already dating a younger man (albeit only a year) who I am very happy with. So, no help there. What's a girl to do to get over this?

Well, for me it's little things that help. On my 25th birthday, since my partner had to work and I was at home, I decided to go out and treat myself to waffles for brunch. I had looked in the mirror that morning and thought I'd never looked so old, wishing wistfully for the days of 21 when I was 5 kilos lighter and didn't have the beginnings of lines around my eyes and thought I needed a pick-me-up. While I was out, I dropped in to the bottle shop to buy some mini alcohol bottles for the christmas hampers I was putting together and the shop assistant asked me for ID. It was the best present I got all day. I've been having trouble finding a new job and have visited a stack of recruitment agencies, and while waiting at one I ended up in a discussion with two other job-seekers. As I have alot of recruitment experience myself, I found myself giving advice to these two ladies, and one of them said to me "I'm so confused as to why you're looking for work, it sounds like you've got so much great experience and really know what you're doing!" When I missed out on a job I wanted, my boyfriend told me "They're not good enough for you anyway". I feel out of touch with friends since I moved away, so I spend time on facebook checking their statuses and photos, and sending them virtual gifts. Every time I feel envious of someone else, like the friend who owns a house with her long-term partner and is a stay-at-home mum with a wonderful, wonderful son, or the friend who is organising her wedding and has just bought a house with her fiance, I am surprised by their envy of something simple I have that they don't, like a career that I love, a quiet weekend at home, or the ability to buy myself something without worrying that I should save the money for the wedding dinner or schoolbooks.

We were brought up in a world where we were told we could have it all, at once, and we could have it now. We are also brought up with the notion that we should live each day to it's fullest potential and get as much out of life as possible, as we never know if this day could be our last. But when we talk about wanting it all, or about this feeling we have as we leave adolescence behind, we're told a conflicting message - 'you have plenty of time. You're only young'. Perhaps this conflict is part of the cause of this rising phenomenon.

The world didn't end when I turned 25, and there was no earth (or mirror) shattering but I've been 25 for a month and a half now, and I feel slightly better. I've decided to take it one day at a time, enjoy the little things in life, and a bunch of other cliches. I'm feng shui-ing my house as well, which is really helping me clarify where I've come from, where I want to go, and what it is that I really want out of this life (more on the whole feng shui thing another time) as well as focus on the positive things I have. Most importantly, I've given myself permission to feel old, and all those other feelings that come along with a QLC even though some (older) people might tell me I'm still young and think that it's complete nonsense. As far as I'm concerned, it's perfectly normal to feel that you're getting old at any age, for one simple reason. When I gave my ID to the lady at the bottleshop on my 25th birthday, I told her that she had made my birthday as I was feeling a bit depressed about ageing, and she was one of those aforementioned older people who told me I was still young while giving me one of those looks I'm sure we've all experienced while hearing the same thing. So I looked at her and said "Well, I'm sure 25 won't seem so old when I'm in my forties, but for now it's the oldest I've ever been and it's going to take some getting used to!"