Quarter Life Crisis In The Middle of a Pandemic: Buckle Up, It’s Gonna Be a Bumpy One

Last night, I was going through a box full of stuff I had during my school days. It was all sweet and nostalgic, until I found a letter written on a yellow-colored concord paper with a lot of doodles.

“A Letter For My Future Self” it says.

I discovered my younger self wrote a list of things I wanted to achieve by the age of 25. It contain things like: Be a successful business woman, own a neat apartment in the city, have my own car, even be married and have kids the year after. “Oh, fuck no,” I muttered to myself. I’m now 24 (well, not really 25 yet but don’t tell me a year doesn’t just go by a blink of an eye); in the middle of the pandemic, lost a job, living in a place she hates, and too blurry to even think about marriage. My head started to spin, tightness on my chest, and I suddenly felt this weird tingly uncomfortable sensation in my stomach.

I opened Instagram hoping I’d find something to make me feel better; but all I saw was a post announcing someone got engaged, a boy I knew from junior high school just bought his first car, a girl who’s a friend of a friend has her own business and in just 6 months she had already opened a new branch, finding out one of a successful newly-discovered influencer is several years younger than me. The idea of everyone seems to be living their best life and achieving something while I’m stuck fills me with panic.

I’m struggling through quarter-life crisis and everything is agony and blurred colors. In psychology, a quarter-life crisis is a crisis involving anxiety over the direction and quality of one’s life which is most commonly experienced in a period ranging from a person’s early twenties up to their mid-thirties. Gotta add up a dash of spice called a pandemic. Now, that sounds more like me.

The quarter-life crisis, or my experience of it, making me feel uncertain, questioning my purpose, and uninspired. I feel lost, constantly anxious, and unfulfilled. I wanted to catch up with everyone. Life feels like a race, but somehow I’m stuck and can’t even move from where I am right now. Everything I do is not enough.

It is pretty sure that I’m not alone in this. I went around and talked to some friends if they somehow struggling with this issue too, and the next thing I know we were talking from A-Z revealing each other’s concerns. It struck me that many people are going through the same anxiety, uncertainty, and distress as I do. That’s only from my circle of my friends, let alone the people outside.

One of my close friend described this combination of quarter-life crisis and pandemic as deadly. I can’t be more agreed. In this coming of age, we should have been out there, chasing careers, meeting people, going to unfamiliar places, experiencing life; and yet we are here stuck with protocols and restrictions that limit our movements. Some even had to experience loss of their loved ones due to this outbreak.

It took a long-ass desperate and full of tears conversation until we realized it’s rather pointless; to be so mad and keep blaming things we couldn’t even do anything about. It wasn’t easy until we finally gave in and said,

“No one knows what’ll happen next month, next year, let alone tomorrow. Next year might be our year, the year where everything gets better and we finally make it. Sometimes, it’s important to make peace with yourself and accept your life for how it is now, even if it is not how you wanted it to be yet.”

I took a deep breathe and realize the tightness in my chest has loosened. When I started writing this, no, I’m not an all new positive person or whatsoever. I still get confused about life and anxiety hits me at times, but I have to say that I’m more resilient now. I realize that I’m not the only one going through this phase, and I’m sure I — we — will get through this eventually. We never know what the future holds, so might as well just enjoy what is in front of us now.

One day, I will get that city apartment and a car, but in the meantime I’ll focus on taking care of myself during the pandemic and keeping this present life together. One step at a time.