The Terrible Twenties

Coming up on ten years ago marks the end of the decade I call my Terrible Twenties. I was a brat. The only person who mattered was me. Whatever was fun was what was most important.

My Terrible Twenties began in my late teens and ended on tax day, 2002, five months after I had met Jeff.

When thinking about my former self I really do see her as another person. When I made the decision to not be a brat anymore it was a finality. I never went back on my decision to snap out of my bratty phase. You'd think that it would have been easy to slip right back in but it was actually really easy to leave it all behind.

I have wondered if I could have lived my Terrible Twenties differently and if I had if I would be a different person now. I don't think that I would have stayed in and read more instead of going out if someone had told me that going out almost every night of the week until the wee hours wasn't worth it. At the time it was incredibly important to me. Looking back it seems SO obvious that it wasn't worth it, but younger me would never have bought that truth. And anyway, I think those years did help shape the current me.

Reflecting on those years in my early 20s leads me to wonder if any authority figure could have talked me out of being such a brat. I wish I could say it would have been possible but I'm not sure about that. I dare say that by the time I left for college it was already set in stone that it would take many years for me to learn to appreciate the freedom of being an adult. If I were a parent would I be able to steer my kid away from the Terrible Twenties? I don't know. But I resolve to try.

(This entry was loosely based on a prompt by the Reverb Broads group. The photo is of me at age 21.)