Guest Writer: Bel Torres
Havana, Cuba
There are dozens of extreme sports out there. People talk about them, and always reference one as the most dangerous. Motocross. Skydiving. Jumping off cliffs.
I think we all have a different concept of what is actually extreme. Because, even when I’ve never been very fond of practicing any sports myself, I stumbled across one about two years ago.It’s called: ‘Surviving your twenties’.
Over a year ago I made a decision: I was going to move to another city, get my own apartment, a new job and start my life as an independent twenty-one-year-old woman. Of course, just said like that, it sounds easy. And, the only reason why it does sound easy is because that is the opening scene of almost every single romantic comedy from the early 2000s.
The brave, self-assured female lead decides she doesn’t want to stay in her hometown her entire life, and decides to move to some big city, like New York or L.A.
Look, I grew up watching those movies —alongside all of the Barbie movies, but that’s a different story—, and because of that I kind of believed it would be like that. Of course, I’ve always known life it’s hard, and that you need to work hard to achieve your goals.
Nothing comes to you just because. I knew that when I took that step, and I still know it now.
Still, I think we can all agree on one thing: rom-coms lied to us.
We grew up seeing how a fictional script reflected the life of a twenty-something year old woman. And again, we are all aware of it being fiction, but there was still a part of us —of me, in this case scenario, that believed it would somehow relate with those movies.
They made us believe being in our twenties was something worth romanticizing every single day. But it actually isn’t so romantic. Most of the times it is so messy, you stop to look around and ask yourself, ‘How the hell did my life turned into this?’.
Because no, we are not living in a small, beautiful apartment in New York, with floor-to-ceiling windows and cinematic lighting. Turns out we don’t have a friend group that dresses like popped out of a Pinterest board, that somehow has the time and money to go out every Saturday nightand drink dirty martinis.
No, we did not land out dream job at a fashion magazine at twenty-two. The hot neighbor across the hall is not secretly in love with us —he’s not even hot, but a seventy-one year old guy who bakes cookies and invites you over for coffee.
Nobody is running through the airport to confess their love. Nobody is standing outside with a boombox.
Most of the times being in your twenties is feeling lost, and alone, and scared of what will happen with your life. It looks like having two jobs and still being concerned about making rent.
It’s constantly wondering if everyone else got a memo that you missed. A guide on how to become the person you’re supposed to be that, somehow, you haven’t read.
So, yeah. In my modest opinion, being in your twenties should be considered another extreme sport —alongside the skydiving and the occasional cliff-jumping.
Because, what is more extreme and dangerous than building a life when you’re not even sure of who you really are?
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