Just Be More Rational...

Thoughts on Being 20

I like to think I’m a pretty rational person. 

I’m a 20-year-old woman living in New York City building a startup. I wake up every day and think about the business; we’re currently in the middle of fundraising and it’s definitely hard work but I’m trying to find balance in it all. 

I think about this thing that my dad said to me back when I was raising for our preseed round. I was stressing about my work and thinking about what it would be like if I was in college and he said, “You know, if you were in college you’d probably be stressing just as much, just about different things. It’d be whatever boy was coming to your party that weekend or your bitchy friend who did xyz.” 

I think about that a lot, what other people my age are doing, and I didn’t used to think about that until it started to come up in conversation way too often. 

“You’re 20???” 

“I just gotta ask, how old are you?”

“You are really impressive for your age!” 

And this brings me to the main topic of discussion - how am I living life as a 20-year-old? It’s no secret to me and everyone in my circle that I’m living an unconventional life. It’s whimsical and fun and hard and rewarding and unlike most other 20 year olds. And yet, I wonder if it really makes that much of a difference. 

I still feel pretty emotionally unstable like a 20-year-old would, hormones raging inside my body creating irrational thoughts and, ultimately, making me feel like I don’t have control over the things I want control over, I need control over.

I hate feeling like a child so I buy a purse that my computer can fit inside to avoid walking into the office in a backpack. I constantly feel inferior to everyone in my life no matter how many people at a conference tell me they wish their kids could be as successful as me one day. I wish my face would get thinner because I still feel like I have some baby fat to lose and I always wish I had more friends. And it makes me feel like I’m not special, which sometimes is a good thing because I can rationalize those feelings and focus on the task at hand, but other times, it makes everything feel so unfair. 

Very classic 20-something thing to say. 

I’ve been struggling with what the “principles of equality and justice” are to a 20 year old. What is this system we exist in? On January 13th, I turn 20. Now what? Nothing really changed in the moment and I don’t remember anything wacky going on with my friends on their 20ths. So why do I feel so lost with my 20th year on Earth?

Thinking back to what my dad said, if I was in college right now, I would probably be having very similar thoughts. Or maybe not. I have no way of knowing. I’ve touched on feeling like an adult but being treated like a teenager and the mismatched ways of life I’ve been living from owning a business to having people my own age I can chat with. I don’t relate to most on a level that feels truly seen and when I talk, it feels like it’s just echoing off the side of a cliff. I’m hoping, in every interaction I have, that someone will see me and hear me and it’ll just click. And that’s just real life, tumbling through the streets of a crowded city running into familiar faces and realizing that you’re the only one that truly knows you. 

And the thing is, I would really love to think I’m this incredible secluded journalist writing down her thoughts so that everyone could know what she was feeling in 2024. I labor over the keyboard, thinking that the next person that reads this excerpt will know it was me, Valkyrie Ann Holmes from Las Vegas, Nevada, that put fingerpad to Google Docs and shared this ungodly piece of literature. But as I sit here and write this, it continuously, almost physically punches me in the face, that if someone were to pick this up and read it, they would have no idea it was me. 

Because this is literally every 20 year old lol. 

And I want to make it clear, this is fucking hilarious!

Every 20-year-old is living, by most standards including their own, an unconventional life. Many feel emotionally unstable, almost all hate being treated like a child while continuously being pushed to be more grown up. A good amount want to feel special and think that everything is unfair and ALL OF US just want to be heard and understood by someone. This isn’t some groundbreaking slam poetry set; this is just the reality. 

every 20-year-old ever

Ultimately, I wanted this essay to be about me not knowing how to be 20 but its simultaneously turned into also just what it means to be 20.

Not knowing.

I can put myself up on a pedestal because of my profession, but I know that at the end of the day, I’ve been here for such a short amount of time, it’s probably not even worth talking about yet. 

I’ll never know what it’s like to be 20 for anyone else because everyone else is too busy being 20! Why would I want to think about what it’s like for someone else my age, height, weight, career, etc to be 20…that doesn’t sound very fun! 

What does it mean to be 20? I think every 20 year old is trying to figure that out, and when I think about my friends in college or startups, all living their early 20s in different ways and exploring things about themselves, we’re all the same.

So many of my reflections eventually come to this close of, “Hey, cool you’re thinking this, but you’re not special,” which honestly makes me chuckle as I write this. What will I tell my children about my early 20s - that I spent that time trying to figure out how to live by the “principles of equality and justice” of 20 year olds? Or that I lived in New York and ran a startup and traveled and had college friends and business friends and had everyone telling me how impressive I was as a 20 year old. 

I started off incredibly sad when I sat down at my computer to cross “write a reflection” off my to-do list, but if I’m always trying to decide what it means to be 20, how will I ever have the time to just be 20? 

I won’t, and that’s the honest answer. 

I think the last thing I want to mention here is that rationalizing your feelings doesn’t always make them hurt less. I’ve tried so so hard to know every in and out of my personality. I can take a step by step approach to virtually every scenario to get to the bottom of why I’m sad or irritated or *insert other emotion here*. But I would say a good 50% of the time, it doesn’t help me. 

Understanding why I feel sad as a 20 year old doesn’t remove the fact that I’m a sad 20 year old, and that’s both scary and exhausting for people of any age! Does knowing yourself help? Yes, absolutely. Does doing reflections like these help you understand yourself? Of course. Do these things make the feelings go away? Not always. 

Trust me, I am the queen of self-reflection and frequently spent hours upon hours walking and talking to myself to break down every facet of my being and put myself back together, especially when my mom passed away. But if I’m sad about my mom passing away, knowing that doesn’t actually do anything. In fact, actually knowing why might make me feel worse for a time. 

This is a note to myself, to just be 20 and stop overanalyzing all of your emotions all the time. It’s going to be hard but sometimes, you just have to feel and let things wash over you without controlling you. If you continue to look down at the pieces, you’ll fail to look up and see the big picture.