am i doing this right?

f25 seeking: external validation

photo taken in the Derby - London St Pancras EMR train bathroom, mid-crash-out. felt poignant. unwarranted?

The other week, I got angry at my boyfriend because I’d convinced myself I was:

1. blind (in both eyes)

2. about to throw up in front of a family of four

3. never going to feel normal again

On our one-year anniversary, no less.

In reality, I was just a bit too high. I was so stoned, in fact, that I couldn’t enjoy the sunset we’d hiked up 200m of practically vertical hill to watch. All I could get was the changing colour of the sky seeping through my eyelids – just one shade of orange to the next. I feel nauseous again even typing this.

Aidan was himself too stoned to rescue me from my spiral. He rubbed my back and told me I’d be okay.

“WHEN?!”

“I don’t know.”

Five minutes passed before I demanded to know, again, “when?!” I was going to feel better.

I presumed he was gatekeeping some horrifying knowledge of the terrible fate that would soon befall me. But I knew that knowing precisely when I was going to feel better would – in turn – make me feel better. Because then I’d know how much longer I’d need to white knuckle it (and not throw up in front the two boys who’d started kicking a ball around 10m in front of us).

“How many more minutes?”

“I don’t know.”

We repeated this exchange three or four times as the sun lowered itself behind the rolling hills of my hometown.

By the time I managed to open my eyes without feeling as though I was going to fall off the face of the earth, the sky was getting dark and I was shivering from the cold.

---

I wrote this on my train back to London. We were running 12 minutes behind schedule. My boyfriend’s hand rested on my thigh as I frantically made edits to my latest Prospect column. This month I wrote about milestones – how my peers are beginning to make them and how I’m… decidedly not.

“Marriage, babies—you could say my peers are racing ahead in the so-called “Game of Life” (if we’re playing by Hasbro’s rules). Between weddings and baby showers, I started to feel a touch insecure about my own station in life.”

- Me (gauche, sorry)

OBVIOUSLY, I was – and continue to be – ecstatic for my newly-wedded best friend and my cousin’s entry into motherhood, but it is only human nature to ask BUT WHAT ABOUT ME? It’s not that I want the attention, the pomp, or the ceremony (though I wouldn’t mind them…), it’s more that I want (pathologically need) to know what the fuck is coming next.

I need to know:

When am I going to make enough money to live a little more lavishly (i.e. not be balls-deep in my overdraft at the end of every month)?

When will I have the time or the money to go travelling?

When will life feel easier?

When will my friends stop being the most important people in my life and when will “family” take centre-stage? Will it ever?

When will I get my writing career figured out?

When will AI take all our jobs?

When will we solve the climate crisis?

If I know when these things are likely to happen, I can plan my time better. Right? To start answering some of these questions, my internal monologue helpfully goes on the offensive, listing demands.

The unrelenting list of demands I make on myself (abridged):

I need to get better at networking.

I need to stop wondering where the time went, letting it slip through my fingers, and start making the time my bitch while it’s still within my grasp.

I need to clean the bathroom.

I need last summer’s clothes to still fit me and I need to make an appointment with the dentist.

I need to post more.

I need to do more post-worthy things – by whatever means necessary.

I need to take better care of myself – whatever that means.

I need to want less, drink less, and I need to procrastinate less.

I need to just fucking get on with it.

I’ve spent the past couple of days swilling salt water and contemplating where it all went wrong. How did that crumb of unidentifiable fibre wedge itself between my wisdom tooth and the flap of gum that perpetually sits on top of it — the gum my tooth is failing to erupt from.

I press my nose against the window to my future but I can’t see a fucking thing through the fog of my breath on the glass. It doesn’t help that my eyesight isn’t very good (I need to invest in contact lenses). Or maybe I’m just looking too hard.

Between salt water rinses, two-day hangovers, and half-written Substack essays, it’s hard to feel like I’m making much in the way of “progress”.

Whatever the answers are – the whens and the hows – they’re unlikely to reveal themselves overnight, right? We all know that change is incremental – and that nothing changes if nothing changes. But what do you do when you’re simultaneously desperate for and petrified of change? I don’t want to risk losing my friends or relationship by moving abroad. I don’t want to sacrifice my financial security by quitting my job to ‘pursue my career as a creative’.

I don’t want to lose anything in my quest to obtain everything. Is that unreasonable? (Yes.)

I know I know I know that crippling uncertainty is an emotional staple in our twenties. We get so used to the clear trajectories, the roadmaps neatly outlined for us throughout our education and early adulthood: get the grades, do the degree, move to the city, find a job etc. I’ve done that. Now what? What happens next?

My feet are itching (and not just from all the bug bites). Shit or get off the pot, I keep telling myself. Clean your room. Write something. Go for a run every once in a while. Do something.

I need to know that my current job, daily habits, and relationships aren’t setting me up for future failure. I need to know that things won’t just ‘be okay’ – they’ll be spectacular.