25

Trigger warning: depression & suicidal thoughts. I promise it's otherwise a lovely collection of thoughts, though!

Before I reached my mid-twenties, the thought of it terrified me. I know how ridiculous that sounds, especially to anyone older than me, but it’s the truth.

Maybe it’s because I’m a woman, and society has decided that we’re only useful when we’re beautiful, and we’re only beautiful when we’re young. 

Maybe - and this one’s a few notches darker - it’s because when I was 17, my mild teenage depression had twisted itself into suicidal ideation, and decided quite inconveniently that it was going to stay put. Though dying isn’t a constant thought on my mind, it pops up more frequently than I’d like, and I’d somehow convinced myself I wouldn’t reach the age of 30. 

Maybe it’s because I’ve always fancied* Leonardo DiCaprio, and now I’m a haggard old crone in his eyes.

I really don’t know why I sat at my sisters wedding, three days before my 24th birthday telling my auntie that I was planning to start lying about my age. I’m glad she scoffed and rolled her eyes.

Fear of the unknown. That’s the likely culprit. I’d known how to be a teenager, I’d done very well at that, and dragged my teenage self into my early twenties. But 24 and 25 just seemed so grown up, I didn’t know what to expect.

Turns out, mid twenties have been the best so far, and I’m very content. I wish I could go back and tell myself how colourful and lively these years are.

Here’s what 25 feels like:

• Three friends sitting cross-legged on the floor around a coffee table, eating crisps (these could either be from a bowl or directly from the bag so long as it’s been ripped open and laid flat to allow for hands to attack it from all angles).

• Finishing a meeting at work in which you actually contributed value and knowledge. Walking directly to the kitchen afterwards, flicking on the kettle and smiling to yourself, wondering ‘who the fuck was that?’ You’re not sure when you became quite so capable, but god it feels good.

• Sitting in a meeting at work, deciding to finally Google that acronym you’ve heard just over a hundred times and nodded along to without understanding. Keeping a poker face for your camera as you realise you’re an idiot. Is ‘Business as Usual’ really too long to say, anyway?

• Reaching the age your mother was when she had her first child. Feeling a mixture of confusion and sympathy; she was just a kid, like you.

• Packing up the car for a big group trip away. Two of your closest friends you’ve known since you were 13 have, at long last, fallen in love. You are now listening to them bicker about whether the other remembered to pack the red wine vinegar for Tuesday night's lentil pie.

• Visiting a feminist museum dedicated to vaginas on a Monday evening. Packing into a room absolutely filled to the brim with like-minded people on a pilgrimage to learn about ancient tampons and see a wall covered in vulvas.

• Leaning against the back of a tube carriage, reading a book as the rickety world chatters around you. You don't have to look up to count the number of stops there are before your destination, you know instinctively when to get off. You remember taking this same line when you were 15 on your first adult-free London excursion with your girl friends. It felt so novel, we all sat bolt upright, eyes glued to the maps, just to be sure there was no chance we'd get lost or miss our stop. That 15 year old is still with you today, still excited about catching the tube without mum's direction, proud to have escaped your claustrophobia and smug about knowing the way.

• Visiting a friend in the city they've made home. Seeing it through their eyes, their experiences, their stories. Even a place you've visited a handful of times before can be rediscovered when it stops being a tourist destination and starts being theirs. Jemma's Bristol, Lucas' London, even the friends that stayed loyal to your hometown can show you the newer, cooler corners of Southsea.

• Never understanding what anyone does for work. I know job titles, industries. But when I try to picture what my friends are actually doing Monday to Friday, I come up blank. Probably emails? 

• My bathroom cabinet is home to both Olaplex No. 3 and Lidl's own brand dry shampoo. I'm much better acquainted with the latter.

• Messaging your vegan friends to ask for help on a lasagne you're throwing together for a dinner party that evening. Trying Sainsbury's and Waitrose before finding Nutritional Yeast in Holland & Barrett.

• Laughing embarrassingly loudly during a pub lunch because your friend just cracked the best-timed joke you've heard in a while. ("I ended up at the pub during an football game  the other day, and it was packed full of men in Arsenal shirts crowding around the TVs, and I realised that this is their Vagina Museum" "What, a room full of cunts?")

• Booking my one annual appointment at the hairdressers, then spending the rest of the year snipping away at my fringe over the bathroom sink, because there's no way I'm throwing away another forty quid for somebody else to mess it up again. (There is, I will).

• Thinking about investing in stocks (because my clever boyfriend does so), then opening my banking app to see the one single pound I deposited into my Help to Buy ISA five years ago and realising I'm not quite there yet.

*Clarification: I actually have never fancied Leo but invented this adoration for him there in the interests of lightening things up