Its My Twenties - My Friends Are Healing And Im Happy

I've been deeply anxious for the last year whilst I've been dating my partner, its my first proper relationship that I'm happy in and that comes with some stresses, and thats fine!. A lot of these problems have been with me my whole life but I've not had a reason to solve them till now to be honest ^-^'

I've started therapy in the last month or so as part of a wider general attempt to lessen this. Its been going really well and helped me realise a few things about myself. I've had some really nice talk with two childhood friends working on themselves in similar ways with issues they've also stood with their whole lives.

We talked about our childhoods, our parents, things that happened to us and about all the little scars we've noticed and maladaptive behaviours we developed because of it. We kind of know theres no objective correct way to act but we know what we want to change in ourselves.

Its made me realise, you grow up vulnerable, under the power of others and you take little damages as you try to survive. No one makes it out of their childhood un-scarred, an inherent part of not controlling the car is that you'll get bashed about sometimes, and thats no ones fault, we're all working with what we've got.

Your twenties, then, are the first time you are your own stable adult with power over yourself. Following that, the first thing you do is self-test. The twenties are for checking your damage, working on fixing it and balancing yourself out again. Noticing your flaws, noticing where they came from, working to slowly change them.

I really like this lense, it definitely doesnt apply universally obviously but thinking about it has left me in a happy mood. I'm enjoying my twenties a lot and this feels like a good part of why.

note: I wonder if theres a point to be made here about how its not your twenties, its the independence the comes with it. There are those who never get that independence because they're reliant on their parents or carers. I wonder if this is a strong argument towards a big part of welfare being to help people get that independence so they can start being their own selves and working on their scars.