January — a month that often has been disregarded as boring, was something that once offered me solace. When I was younger, the thought of becoming an adult excited me — the independence and liberation within the big, wide, whole world felt achievable once I had reached the grown status. A status which consisted of two things: leaving my home to move into my own place and having a big girl job.

For years, I had worked towards this. I was constantly told that in order to achieve my desired future, all my energy should be placed into school. And so, that is what I did. I set myself goals that I just had to reach: I had to get into the prestigious sixth form, and I had to get into the prestigious university. Only then will I have achieved. Become something of myself. Have an actual purpose to my existence. In placing my value upon how well I could achieve, I had ridden myself of the luxury of being considered a calm and kind individual. Instead, many who do not know me well enough view me as cold and uptight. I have often missed out upon experiences of teenagehood, purely so that I could show my intellectual capabilities because that is what I thought would get me somewhere…anywhere that made me feel accomplished. Prestige was just a stepping stone to what I had wanted, which still dilutes to the same thing I wished for upon all my birthday candles: the grown status of adequacy.

It has been a few months since I have turned twenty, and in all honesty I have been in a massive slump. Despite achieving the goals I had set for myself in the past, I no longer see the light at the end of the tunnel. I have never felt more inadequate in my whole life. The last few months have been filled with more rejections than I have ever received. Whilst I am fully aware of the privileged position I have in order to say that, I no longer see hope. My birthday wishes now feel wasted upon my dream career and a stable future, my work feels futile, and I feel overwhelmed. I write this while I am putting off my return to uni — a uni which once was an attainable dream to eleven year old me, is now a place which I’ve begun to fear.

I am often told that I really do not need to put such pressure on myself, that I have so many years ahead of me, that my ambition will be the death of me — and I still continuously refuse to accept such a fact. I am constantly surrounded by twenty something year olds that have accomplished multitudes — science prodigies, business owners, tennis superstars, songwriters. Did they listen to such words and put off accomplishment, the feeling of having made it in this big, wide, whole world? My name has no sense of meaning to me anymore, it feels like a minor flaw in a heavy directory. A filler made to fit between the big names. Meant for a quick glance, and if remembered, it would inevitably be incorrect. 

I do not write this for self-pity or words of consolation. I thought that writing how I have felt over the last few months would help alleviate the feeling of my future’s impending doom, and help me understand why I am putting off my return. But I remain in square one, just as confused as I was at 7…wondering what the word stability really means.