Confessions of a Tired 20-Something Girl

It's been a year since I cried on the flight home from Phuket to Singapore. In 4 years I will be 30, childless, Asian and unmarried. In two years I will be an older young adult. In one hour, I will crawl out of bed because it's 4 pm on a Tuesday, and I have too many things to accomplish with my youth to be depressed. But instead, I rolled out of bed, brushed my teeth and snuggled between my big, fluffy stuffed mammoth and crocodile. Not today. 4 pm is too late to conquer the world. Somewhere in the world, the sun is just rising. 

Not today. Today, I shall lie in bed and ponder over the woes of feminism, the comical state of modern politics and activism and my directionless life while I recuperate from the agonizing reality of juggling my different identities as an individual and a performer everywhere outside of this bedroom. 

I am still sleepy from my Olly melatonin gummies, but I get up anyway, splash water on my face and try not to look like a raccoon. Life goes on. On days like this, I try to conserve my energy by doomscrolling through YouTube Shorts. No, I don't like TikTok because I want the option of long-form videos, even though they have mostly blended into a seamless series of mindless, aesthetic existence. Not that I don't love watching “day in my life” videos and trips to Erewhon for the entirety of days, until my very own “day in my life” reel is just a very tired raccoon tucked under a big white duvet squinting at a tiny rectangle screen. 

Recently, I’ve been trying to live a better life. Better, in a subjective sense, because really who's to say whose life is better? But along the general lines of- working out a bit more, wearing something other than what looks like pyjamas (I swear they are just comfy cotton pants and t-shirts) and eating whole foods. Yes, whole foods like blueberries and granola breakfasts and low GI grains for dinner, with protein and leafy vegetables of course. God forbid my dietician read my soliloquy and figure out the truth between the lines.

Somewhere between turning 24 and then 25, I've started to feel a little older than usual. Not older like noticing wrinkles and grey hairs as one usually does in stressful environments, but older like maturing. These days, my thoughts seem to bloom on their own, every paradox of life unfazes me, and I no longer feel the need to belong. I am just wholeheartedly and realistically imperfect, me. 

Maybe this is the reality of growing up or maturing. Nothing to do with age until my back starts hurting for no reason on hour 6 of my shift at the front desk. When I was a kid, I always thought that growing up would be easy, as if everything would magically work out. I never understood the other kids who had anxieties about finding their passions or a partner. I felt like things would just work out on their own. And to some extent, it did. I found my passion in hospitality, worked my way up and enrolled myself in an MBA to further my education. I moved out of my family home at 22 to rent a room with a queen-sized bed and a desk in an apartment and have been living by my own rules ever since then. I've fulfilled all the items on the bucket list that I've written as a kid- studied fashion in college while working at an acai shop on weekends, travelled to America twice with my savings, got my name featured in tiny print at the corner of editorial spreads in various fashion magazines and moved out really young (by Singaporean standards) to build my own life. In the span of 8 years, I've held more than 10 freelance, full-time and part-time jobs in different industries from fashion to healthcare, events and hospitality. And now at 26, I somehow feel like I've accomplished everything and nothing at once. 

Don't get me wrong- I still have dreams. I want to backpack across Europe, speak Spanish fluently, complete my MBA, own an apartment somewhere in the world, move abroad and develop my career further. But I no longer have the energy to chase my dreams feverishly anymore. Recently, my perfect day consists of a barre class at noon, followed by an iced matcha and a nap, then some reading, dinner and bedtime. I don't know if this is burnout, but I am exhausted from feeling like all my accomplishments are never enough, and I like my slow living routine. 

Somewhere around this time last year, my life began to fall apart. While on vacation in Thailand, I broke up with my partner of three years, after moving mountains to reconcile our differences- both cultural and behavioural, to live together in a shared apartment for an entire year. I went back to work the day after we landed in Singapore, only to be called into a meeting with my manager. She broke the news that she had resigned and had left me in charge of running the department indefinitely. I was only two months into the job. Somehow, with lots of therapy and self-care, I managed to survive until the end of the year. But that was when I completely fell apart. School had become unmanageable, work was piling up, and the apartment I had just moved into was absolutely disgusting and unlivable. I had anxiety attacks and nightmares, and I could never fall asleep or stay awake when I wanted to. I would wake up drenched in cold sweat on the floor in the middle of the night, suffocated in my windowless shoebox of a room. My mood worsened rapidly, and I didn’t know what to do. 

I ended up in my therapist’s office on a Saturday morning, two hours before I was called into work to pull an extra shift. That was when I decided that my life had to change. I began consciously making decisions that would put me in a better position to tackle my stressful lifestyle. Starting from the basics, I moved out of that cramped, cockroach-infested apartment into a spacious one filled with sunlight. I sought help from my university’s student support team to defer my studies for a semester while I sorted out my personal life. I negotiated for a less demanding role at work that would allow me more time to decompress, yet give me a purpose to leave the house everyday. I started to eat more nutritious food, slept more regular hours and picked up hobbies to occupy my time between shifts. 

At the beginning of this year, I bought selenite, rose quartz and lapis lazuli crystals to manifest a more spiritual year filled with self-love, peace and wisdom. I found friends, built a support system for myself, got a promotion at work and finally caught up with school. I started healing. But I never fully took a break- I persisted with my routines- juggling work and school and multiple hobbies that I’d picked up along the way. I made amazing friends online who became offline friends, and I am so thankful for the community and the new lifestyle that I had created for myself. Most recently, I finally “graduated” from bi-weekly to monthly to ad-hoc therapy and I am so proud of myself. I know that not everything is done and dusted, there are definitely moments where I feel like I am crawling through glass shards to get out of a traumatic flashback, and times when I truly struggle to get out of bed because life feels so meaningless. But most of the time, I am okay, and that’s what truly matters. I know that I am due for a big break soon- a proper “eat, pray, love” solo adventure of sorts, and the planning for that is in the works. Until then, I will keep working on myself, practising self-regulation and grounding techniques, keeping up with my reading and writing and pottery making, exploring the city with my offline friends, working, studying and volunteering. The weight of the world and the idiosyncrasies of my spiralling thoughts will always weigh upon my mind. 

But not today. Today I am eating my blueberries and going for a barre class at noon, followed by matcha and a nap. Because I deserve a break.