Mourning the Lost Twenty Something and Choosing to Live the Next Chapter

Ageing is such a strange thing. One day you’re young, carefree, with no bills to pay. Then you blink, and suddenly you’re the adult. You’re the one making decisions, looking after yourself, maybe even looking after other people. Nobody tells you just how quickly it happens. Yes, you know birthdays mean you’re getting older. But you don’t really grasp how fast the stages of life move until you wake up one day and realise you’ve crossed into a new one.

Realising I’m Not in My Twenties Anymore and the Pressure of Turning Thirty

That’s where I’ve been recently. In this weird space where I’m fully aware of how old I am, while also feeling like I never really got to enjoy my early twenties. It recently dawned on me that my little cousins, nieces, and nephews (whom I regard as my little babies) are now young adults attending varsity and making their own life decisions. Watching them grow up has been a shock to the system as I realise I am no longer young.

Society is harsh, especially to women. It has this cruel way of telling women that they expire the moment they hit 30. I never believed it. I’d roll my eyes at it. But when I hit thirty, something shifted. A voice in the back of my head started whispering that maybe it is true. Perhaps the best years of my life are over. Maybe my life had reached its peak in my twenties.

Did I Really Live in My Twenties?

In this weird space, my mind has been stuck in a loop, wondering whether I really lived out loud in my twenties. We are sold this idea that the twenties are the pinnacle of youth. That’s when beauty, freedom, and power collide. That’s when you’re at your most magnetic, your most alive. And I look back and honestly, I don’t remember my early twenties being anything like that.

A lot of my twenties were about surviving. Studying to become a chartered accountant. Making bad choices rooted in childhood trauma. Trying to figure out life with a mental illness. Trying to prove my worth over and over again. And in doing all that, I lost so much. I lost time, opportunity and freedom. I missed out on the ability to explore who I was. I was too busy trying to be good. Too busy trying to not disappoint my mom. Too busy forcing myself into systems I hated just so I could be seen as worthy.

Choices Rooted in Fear

And when I think about it now, I realise I wasn’t free. Not really. I didn’t take risks. I didn’t try and fail. I didn’t experiment. I didn’t live in ways that would have scared me but also shown me who I was.

Even the choices that looked good on the outside, such as not drinking or smoking, make me wonder about them now. Were those really choices rooted in self-care? Or were they just more proof-seeking? More ways of trying to show the world I was a “good” person? And if that’s the case, then even those decisions were made from fear. Fear of dying young. Fear of being labelled. Fear of not being enough.

And fear doesn’t leave room for freedom.

Mourning the Girl I Didn’t Get to Be

That’s why lately I’ve been mourning. Mourning the twenties I never got to fully live. Mourning the girl I didn’t get to be. Mourning the carefree version of me that never had the chance to stretch her wings.

And I won’t lie, it’s been hard to believe that life doesn’t end at thirty. Hard to convince myself that there is still more life ahead. That there are still chapters left to write. Yes, ageing is a blessing, and the only alternative is death. I know that. I tell people that. But knowing ageing is a blessing doesn’t cancel out the grief of looking back and realising how much of yourself you didn’t get to experience.

So I sit with that grief. And I wonder if other people do too. I look at faces around me and I ask myself: did they also have to mourn versions of themselves that never got to live? Did they also feel this strange pain of knowing you weren’t really free when you thought you were?

Holding Onto Hope

I think a lot of us carry that grief quietly, hoping there’s still something beautiful ahead. And maybe that’s what keeps us alive: the hope that tomorrow will still hold something worth staying for. Because if we ever truly believed that yesterday was the best it could get, many of us wouldn’t want to go on.

So here I am, saying it out loud. Mourning the twenties I lost. And still trying to believe there’s more to come.