How My Quarter-life Crisis Saved Me 20 Years of Drama

It’s Friday. I’m standing in the early morning sun in my PJs as Lilly takes a shit in the yard. As I lazily zone out into the distance, I’m painfully aware of how calm I am. My mind is quiet. I can hear the birds chittering in the trees and the wind flowing through the branches. My heart isn’t going a million miles an hour from the constant loop of life’s problems. And a small voice seems to whisper two little words in the back of my mind: it’s over. A week after celebrating my 27th birthday, I’ve finally been freed from my sentence of, what I like to call, my quarter-life crisis. Anyone who has been around in the last ten years knows that it wasn’t pretty, and some might even just chalk it up to “growing pains”. But as a person who stumbled into it at the ripe age of 17, I can you that a quarter-life crisis is very real and very cathartic IF you can survive it.

Mid-life Crisis vs Quarter-life Crisis

For you to understand what a quarter-life crisis is, we first have to understand what the more popular mid-life crisis is. As someone who has watched many people go through a midlife crisis, I’d like to take a crack at defining this with a little story.

Mid-life Crisis

You’re at a barbeque at a family member's house with your favorite beverage in hand. Your spouse is across the lawn talking it up a smile on their face. Your kids are running around in the yard with their cousins. Their high-pitched screams and laughter fill the air. Everyone around you is having a fantastic time and you have a nice, happy smile on your face. But something inside seems off. Icky. Like you’ve somehow blended into life a little too well. Your mind drifts to the last time you took a vacation, had sex, or even had a day completely to yourself. You remember that one of the kids needs help with their science project before school tomorrow and the other kid has a birthday coming up, so you need to pick up a cake the next time you go shopping. You think of sports, and how you were in little league once and would give anything to just be a kid swinging a plastic bat and drinking from a juice box again. Then you think of naptime, and recess, and how youth is fleeting. You catch a distorted reflection of yourself in a nearby window and notice a few grays sticking out. Pretty soon the barbeque is all but a din in the background as you slowly begin to go through the events that led you to this moment and you have the urge to reclaim a youth that you never got to fully enjoy. You have the untamable urge to splurge on nonsense to fill the void, maybe even have a sexy night with a stranger. All of this just to feel the zing you lost somewhere between keg stands and your first child’s diapers. And then your significant other taps you on the shoulder, bringing you back to the BBQ you had long forgotten about, and asks you if you’re okay. And you simply reply. “Yeah, I’m fine.”

This descent into madness is a flaw in the human condition and I believe it stems from the pressures of modern society. Go to school, get good grades, get a degree in a field that will give you a good-paying job, work at that job until you retire at the ripe age of 65, and then dissolve into the distance in a dusty heap of exhaustion. This stagnant, ridged, atomtronic-like, unobtainable, unrealistic lifestyle is why I’ve seen most adults in my life switch gears in their 40’s. Whether they cheat on their spouse, quit their job, move to the mountains, or do all of the above, there are many ways that a person can snap. And after that pretty picture I’ve painted, I think any sane person would snap with that amount of pressure building up inside of them. It’s unhealthy and borderline insane. Yet, we teach kids across the globe to aspire to obtain this kind of lifestyle and grip it with both hands. But with all of us living in the Age of Information, kids are learning early on in life that this “lifestyle” isn’t it. Enter the quarter-life crisis. Let me try to define this by loosely using my own experience as a definition.

Quarter-life Crisis

You’re a star student. Got all the good grades and accolades to get you into the college of your dreams. You got the scholarships to pay some of the way and your parents helped you get everything you need to start your new life on the right foot. You have an inkling about those student loans you’ll owe when all of this college stuff is over, but you’ll deal with that later. You have time. You're young. You make it to your dorm and it’s small. Smaller than you expected but you are optimistic. This is a new chapter in life, full of freedom and new opportunities. You try to make your room like home. It’s aight. You make friends after about a month of trying to figure out this new landscape called campus. Everything, and I mean everything, is different. The food is weird. The climate sucks. You persevere because “you already fought so hard to be here” and you're constantly reminded of the sacrifice everyone has put in to get you here in the first place. You owe it to them to see college through to the bitter end. Your suffering becomes a badge of honor. Your degree becomes your identity and a high level of self-worth that you just have to achieve. The amount of work you put in is tied to how worthy you are of anything good in life. You cry and scream. A lot. You make a bazillion mistakes, have drunk nights, sloppy sex with strangers, and somehow manage to stumble onto the graduation stage in one piece. You feel accomplished. Everyone in the family is beaming and “is so proud of you”. But something feels off. Icky. You shake it off and enjoy the moment. That inkling of your student loans is now a ticking timebomb set to go off in six months. You apply for jobs in your field the way you were taught because your teachers said, “this is how you get a job”. You fail. You try again. The six months pass. You now work at some basic job that pays you just enough to get by, but it isn’t in your field. You live in an apartment. It’s aight. You pay your student loans. You spend a few years juggling family, work, and whatever social life you can afford on your biweekly paychecks. You keep up the good fight at surviving, but your degree is starting to look dusty and those proud eyes you saw at graduation are starting to stare at you with judgment. You end up having to go home for some reason and you pass by your old high school for nostalgia's sake, because why not at this point? And as you stare at the front of that building, the world feels like an endless sea of bills, debt, and frustration. You contemplate suicide and realize that it’s too much effort. You go back to your apartment with a newfound determination to get your shit together. You work hard and I mean really hard. You get a new job that still isn’t in your field but pays so much more. Your rent goes up. Again. You nearly die in a car crash. And one summer day you’re on your way to work and you see a small child holding their parent’s hand as they cross the street. You think about summer vacation and video games and freedom. You count how many years it’s been since the sweet days of youth and realize it’s only been five years. You start to think about all the years ahead and quickly shake it off because you have to get to work. You go home for the holidays. You admit you're exhausted but are somehow still smiling and laughing as if everything is normal. You see your younger siblings blissfully ignorant of life’s problems as they play on the floor. You see your parents are aging and that thought of the future starts to resurface. You see your grandparents walking slower and they nearly fade before your eyes as you count the years that you have left with them. You think about how busy you are and wonder if your boss put in your PTO correctly this time. You think about all the bullshit you’ve had to endure and how much there is still left to go. You’re unhappy. You feel trapped. You don’t even fit into your hometown because you’ve changed so much that you barely recognize yourself when you look in the mirror. You feel like 13 going on 80 and wonder how you even got to this point. And then your sister taps you on the shoulder and asks you if you’re okay. And you turn around and say. “Yeah, I’m fine.”

Spiraling into dissatisfaction, I believe, is caused by ignoring our "true selves". When I set out to write this article, I wanted to do a traditional “5 Ways That a Quarter-life Crisis Saved Me Time” kind of article. But an internal crisis can’t be summed up in bullet points or lists. Crisis, in any form, is an experience. One that tears you from the inside out and makes you question everything. Those that experience this sort of internal crisis make me sad because that means that somewhere along the way they lost their "true self". The later you have this crisis, the harder it is to identify your “true self”. I barely was able to save my own “true self” and I hadn’t even gone to my first high school reunion. I can only imagine where I would've been in life if I didn't go through a quarter-life crisis and I cringe at the potential outcome. Internal crisis, whether we like it or not, is necessary and purposeful. It happens for a reason and it will not last forever. But does that mean we just have to sit back and wait for it to happen to us? Or are there ways to maneuver through the dark tunnels that make up an internal crisis?

The 5 Stages of Either Crisis

In a feeble attempt to save anyone else from another episode of an internal crisis, I’d like to express some of the things I learned from enduring the painful journey of re-self-discovery, and why it saved me twenty years of drama. Take this list of stages however you’d like and see if you can apply some of these lessons to your own life to avoid the dreaded internal crisis we are all prone to having (if you didn’t already have one in 2020).

Stage 1: The Purge

Once you’ve come to the point where you have accepted that this everyday life you've been living is no longer for you, you start questioning everything. Questioning everything can sometimes mean preverbally setting the house on fire and laughing as it burns. Growth requires change, and crisis makes us choose the kind of change that pops off hard and fast. This is why some people abruptly move, quit their jobs, break off lifelong relationships, or even start spending an unhealthy amount of money and time on frivolous distractions without preface. An unstoppable purge is occurring that is driven by years of pent-up, internal oppression of expression. The fact that I purged in my 20s instead of my 40s saved me the drama of staying in unhealthy relationships that no longer served me by cutting off people that didn't reciprocate the same energy back. It also allowed me time to recover from bad financial choices and set better boundaries with the awesome people that managed to stick around through it all. I also was able to do all of this without involving the innocent lives of children. I think that this stage is one that involves a lot of crying and support from loved ones. If the questions become too much, take a break and do something light and fun. I humbly believe that falling down the rabbit hole is the fastest way to spiral out of control and will result in you contracting "analysis paralysis", which is NOT a fun place to be. Take it slow and steady until the proverbial ground stops shaking.

Stage 2: Re-Self Discovery

After the embers have died out, it’s time to see what’s left. This is when you start to think that you have your new self figured out and you start looking around for stability. You try new things and old things just to see what resonates with you. You dust off the things you cherish that may have gotten a little singed in the purge but you love it just the same. You may not have anything left at all. I basically had the peak of my crisis at the end of 2018 and when all was said and done the things that I valued the most were my childhood bear, Hope, and my silver Gamecube. I sat in my room for weeks trying to understand who I was and what I wanted to be. I felt like a fraud and didn’t know why. It led to deeper questions and gave me a bit of hope to cling to as I found some gems in the ashes. The fact that I did this in my 20s instead of my 40s gave me an advantage because I wasn’t too far away from childhood. I was able to take my younger self by the hand by diving into things that I had at my disposal like video games and books. It allowed me to find joy in the little things about myself that I had forgotten and try new things that I now can't live without (like Anime). But there is a dark underbelly to this happiness that no one expects to find and I believe this is where most people get stuck.

Stage 3: The Dark Night of the Soul

I’m a writer, so I can’t help but use this phrase when I think of what comes next. If you were a hero in a fairy tale, this is the moment when something terrible happens and makes you lose faith in the fight. An internal crisis is no different. If you manage to reconnect with your youth and get familiar with the good memories, chances are the bad ones will come up too. The residual angst will start to resurface along with that winy three-year-old that didn’t get a second dessert. You are still learning about yourself, but it isn’t fun anymore. It hurts. And you start to enter this dark corridor in your mind that makes you feel like you took a wrong turn back on Sunshine Street. But you're right where you need to be. This is an uncomfortable and unique journey through the emotional black gook of past trauma. This is the stage where most people in their 40s lose their marbles and with good reason. I did this in my 20s and my so-called youth didn’t save me from the physically, mentally, and emotionally disturbing process of dealing with past trauma. The older you are, the more trauma you have and the harder it is to get closure about certain things. Therapy is the best place to be at this point. It gives you a chance to have a dialogue about your problems in a safe space and lay out all your grief on the table. It’s a hard place to sit in, and it can take some time to work through until you feel comfortable enough to even think about it. If you didn't have tissues handy before, you're gonna need them now. But the stage after is what makes the good fight worth it.

Stage 4: Falling in Love with Yourself

As you deal with the emotional gook, you start to feel a little lighter. You look in the mirror and recognize old parts of yourself that you thought had slipped away for good. This is a fantastic time to start looking in the mirror, specifically at your eyes. It can be uncomfortable at first, but your eyes have never once changed. They are always there looking back at you. This can be a time when you want to get super fit and healthy to try to reclaim the spice of life. Dressing in new clothes that speak to who you are as a person is also a good idea, as it helps you solidify the new version of yourself that you’re trying to become. People around you may or may not support your choices. They may even think you're crazy. The fact that I did this in my 20s instead of my 40s gave me the proverbial pass that I’ll eventually “figure it out” as I get older. It also made everyone around me think that I was a lost cause and kind of left me alone to be one with my weirdness. The older you are, the less time you get to have a moment of “me time”, so this can be a weird stage to be in if you have dependents. But once you find your grove, it’s as if life was always meant to be this way. You start to find things that you genuinely love about yourself and let go of the shame that you've held onto for so long. You strip away the last of the cobwebs that no longer fit in this new version of yourself. And you love it.

Stage 5: Catharsis

From there, you begin to blossom into whatever you were truly meant to be when you first got here on your birthday. You’ve stripped away about 90% of the fears, guilt, and trauma of the past and decided that you’re going to live life your way. It may still be hard and annoying, but you’re not screaming at the walls anymore so that’s good. You feel lighter and it’s almost like greatness is on the horizon. You just have to reach out and grasp it. If you keep following this light, floaty feeling, it won't let you down. Trust in yourself and hear the inner whispers of your heart's desires.

Honestly writing about this like it’s a simple, five-step plan almost seems laughable. But it’s the truth. This doesn’t encompass even a mila-fraction of the journey that one takes going through a mid-life or quarter-life crisis. There are too many weeds that we could get into when diving into the darkness of an internal crisis. I’m blessed that I survived mine without having kids, going to jail, or just pulling the plug on life altogether. I know a few people who are now with Spirit because they couldn’t take what life was throwing at them. It’s sad. But as many people keep saying, we’re in a great awakening. Whether it’s in the esoteric sense of being whole again with Spirit, or in the practical sense of living life to the fullest before we croak, everyone seems to be waking up. I encourage you to avoid the internal crisis altogether by seeing the world through the lens of a child. Question things. See wonder and beauty in the mundane. Sit on the floor and stare at the cracks in the ceiling. Use your imagination. Dive deep into your sexual preferences and desires. Get comfy with money. Set boundaries. And above all else, love yourself always. It’s a big scary world out there with 8 billion people in it. You’re not alone. You’re just unique. And that is a beautiful thing.

I hope to see you soon in whatever form I appear. Until next time.

About the Author

Crystal Cabrae is a storyteller who specializes in writing dystopian, romantic, and adventurous worlds for animation and fantastical fiction. She is a proud graduate of Full Sail University, AMDA, and New World School of the Arts. Her six years of acting training in both New York and Miami gives her a unique perspective when approaching her characters. She has a passion for sharing how to create stories with the world and inspiring the storyteller that lives within all of us. Follow her on IG or Pinterest to know the latest.