I had never consciously planned on getting here. I was never supposed to turn twenty five. What had happened? How did I stop being twenty four?

I think twenty five is the age that you realize that you have begun your inevitable march towards adulthood. Prior to that every birthday is just what it’s supposed to be: a birthday – a cause for celebration and dinner with friends. Nothing more. You don’t stop to think about how you’re doing in life. You’re just happy to be where you are. Also at the back of your mind you’re confident that while everyone else is destined to a normal, uneventful life yours will somehow be very different. You aren’t sure exactly how but you know it will be faster, more exciting and certainly more glamorous.

The twenty fifth birthday though comes with an important realization: You’re just like everyone else. You aren’t very unique, you aren’t very special. You’re leading the same life everyone else is and pretty soon you are going to turn into your parents. You’re going to get married, settle down, have children and worry about their board exams. Then you take a look at you’re grandmother and grandfather and realize with horror that one day you too will be arthritic, have bad digestion and suffer from poor bladder control. Until that point of time you assumed that your grandparents were born as grandparents. You never realized that sixty years ago they looked just like you.

You also start worrying about getting your act together. Its time to stop fooling around and start behaving like a sensible adult. The problem though is that you suck at being a sensible adult. You aren’t very high on confidence and you’re pretty sure that you’re making an ass of yourself all the time. Why aren’t you smarter, more self assured and clear about where you’re heading?

I made two attempts at penning down my thoughts on my birthday. The first was just random collection of everything I’d done on the tenth of June. Half an hour later I deleted it. I had written it in a state of mild hysteria, overcome by an obsessive need to sound cheerful, casual and witty. It hardly reflected how I truly felt about being where I am now.

Sometime later I found an article on the “Quarter life crisis – the unique challenges of life in your twenties” and pasted it on my blog. Then I deleted that too. I could identify with what was written but it wasn’t my voice, it wasn’t MY story. (Sorry your comment was deleted in the process Srishti)

Sigh.My sister gotten herself married a month after she turned twenty five. How could she? How could she?