Quarter-Life Crisis: Not where I thought I’d be by 31

Last month, I turned 31. I’m definitely feeling it. This is not where I thought I’d be — but then, I never expected to be anywhere.

What do you do when you outlive the age you never expected to get to? I lived such a childhood that I never expected to make it to 18, let alone 21-25, and now I’m 31. A life of abuse and infantilization never once allowed me to hope for this point in my life, so I literally never had any plans.

I don’t even believe in plans or goals.

No matter what goal I’ve set, life has always gotten in the way. While I’m well aware that I self-sabotage, I’m also aware of outside forces that exemplify the fact that a lot of shit actually does happen to people. I find manifestation to be a load of crap, so don’t you dare @ me.

I’m so irritated.

This is not where I thought I’d be.

Making it to my 30s was a true pipe dream where I at least had enough money to live comfortably, outside the fear of it. No one ever taught me anything worth knowing in regard to surviving as an adult, and it ticks me off. I’m constantly reminded of how grateful I should be in spite of being treated like crap. Both things can be true — I can have gratitude, but also want better parents.

I was a child whose mother did not abort me, but should have. I am pro-choice because my mother didn’t have that choice. I spent everyday of my childhood wishing I’d been given up for adoption. I’d seen the foster care system and knew enough then to know that adoption was not a promise that you’d have a better life. I just couldn’t imagine a worse life than my childhood.

Not growing in the throes of my paternal family, who seemingly wanted me if my mother did not, would have also been for the best. Growing up conservative, homophobic, racist and judgmental would not have created the person I am today. I’d have likely married a high school sweetheart, forced myself to endure the sex with him and be okay with carrying a parasite baby in me — only to divorce later, probably following the same path of my parents.

I survived my childhood, but it could have been monumentally better.

I don’t come from money. I quickly learned not to want a lot of things and how to survive on the bare minimum, though I struggle with it in adulthood today because I’ve grown accustomed to the luxurious of capitalism as my retail paycheck grew.

Now I don’t have that same paycheck, and my luxuries are no more. This is the so-called dream: you work your ass off for a business that pays you pennies as the face of the company while corporate banks millions in their office jobs with negotiable salaries and weekends off. As your pay goes up, so do your expenses.

Blogging the same way I did 10 years ago doesn’t work. It doesn’t change anything.

I spent years in Garland wasting away my life when I could have been at least a little sleazier with Pinterest — but I let some people get into my head that I had to be an able-bodied individual in order to succeed, while believing people I thought were my friends called me a sellout if I so much as placed an affiliate link on my blog.

It’s not working anymore. I keep thinking I don’t care about what people think, but I do. Other people can just go out and do something, so why the fuck can’t I?

I feel like there’s something broken within me that keeps me from being able to turn off my care factor. I don’t feel like I fit in anywhere. When I excel at my work, I’m told to slow down. I don’t know how to do my best and deliver subpar.

Even fictional young adults struggling with life are doing better than me because they’re still out there doing it, trying it all.