Rec | BEST YEAR EVER

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i was 21 in 2018 - which i feel like was a great year overall. my boyfriend and i had just started dating, so we spent that whole summer falling in love - he worked at a bar and i would go see him every night and we would hang out there after everyone left until sunrise. those are some of my best memories! i had bright pink/bleached hair and was in a really confident place in my life - i felt good with my personal style, my body image, my mental health. i was working a barista job that i really enjoyed, and living with my roommates (now best friends!) in the best apartment ever. i was in the 2nd/3rd year of my bachelor’s and really enjoying my studies and creative projects, got involved with my student climate justice protests, and just really enjoyed the social life of being in university. looking back today, what i miss most about being 21 is how much i knew myself. i lost a lot of that confidence over the years and i often look back to that time as a marker of where i would like to get back. i was just better at having fun - and i think that’s exactly was 21 is for. take risks! trust your intuition! have FUN!

@milkbags

Jun 11, 2024

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some highest highs, many lowest lows, lots and lots of growth

to preface, i actually know a lot of people who had an amazing time being 21! i think most of the lows were due to poor decision-making and bad luck in my love life which can happen at any age 🙈 at the same time i still hosted and attended a lot of cool events and parties; i tried new things and made some amazing friends; i lived on my own for the first time that summer and had a few cool academic accomplishments! so despite the trauma and heartbreak lol, i learned SO so much about myself and the world which i am grateful for. ❤️‍🩹 also, what i do think is a common experience for many 21 year olds is having a lot of growth through that year, which is never a bad thing!

@marxinista

Jun 11, 2024

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21 is hard and horrible and fun and great and it all counts

I began my 21st year with my head in the toilet of a man I was seeing. He held my hair back as I repeatedly wailed “why don’t you want to be with meeeee”. Barely anyone had turned up to my party earlier. That year had many such sad moments like this, but it also transitioned into one of the most fun times of my life. I had a really bad depressive episode, but it was the first time I’d felt really heard by my family went home for an bit to be looked after, I also had a best friend at uni, Alice who looked after me so well and we’re still friends today. Eventually I graduated uni and I moved in with one of my best friends, Rohan. We worked at a bar together and the people at that bar became my family for a while, I stayed in Sheffield my uni town for 5 more years because of that bar. we still meet up a couple times a year for a reunion. I had purple hair and I was drunk a lot, I cried a lot, I had so much anxiety, I wrote essentially nothing but I read more than I had in the 3 years of uni prior to it. I had so much fun working at that bar, I met so many people and danced so much. slept with far too many musicians which was often traumatic but means I have some great stories and I learnt a lot about myself. 21 is really hard, but it’s also really fun, and it all counts and it all means something. I look back at 21 year old me with so much love and compassion, one day you will feel the same about yourself and you’ll be so proud of that person.

@mouse

Jun 11, 2024

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ignorance is bliss kinda thing

happy (early?) birthday!! 🎉 Idk what advice to give because i feel like the 20-somethings now are more emotionally aware than the 20-somethings from even as recent as a decade ago, but tune into your body, give yourself grace, and listen to others’ stories without feeling pressured to model your life after someone else’s. & if you don’t know what you want your life to look like yet that’s okay! ❤️ At 21 I was in my senior year of college and engaged to be married within the year after graduation. In the southern religious environment we were in this wasn’t abnormal, but in retrospect that was soooo young to get married and I don’t think I would have so quickly if I hadn’t been so desperate to get out of a problematic family situation that involved some financial abuse. Despite changing A LOT over the past decade+ my partner and I are still together, and I look back at 21 as a time when I most followed the social script expected of me and coasted on that for a while, until it all started to fall apart (in an ultimately good if devastating way) when I became a mom at 24. tl;dr: my 21 was tame and mellow and happy but i had no idea who i was or what i could be and now i do have a stronger sense of that at 32 and that feels better