how to have a proper quarter life crisis
& survive when the best years of your life aren't
In my chest there’s a cavity stuffed with every version of me that doesn’t exist.
It sits where my heart should. It started as a hairline fracture in the foundation, not loud or obvious. Slowly shifting and widening overtime until it became a chasm. Big enough to hold them all—all the phantom selfs I might have been. That is where they live now.
They press against my ribs like birds in a cage, squaking for me to look, to let them out. Me. Me. Me. Sometimes I let them travel to my head and sit there for awhile, their incessant squaking maddening among my daily thoughts. They poison my thoughts with a slow, grinding unraveling that starts as a whisper. Is this it? Is this all there is?
They whisper sweet nothings in my ear about quitting my job as I scroll through anouncement after anouncement. Enagaged. Expecting. Married. Moved abroad. Started a business. Every tap of my thumb is another reminder that someone, somewhere, has figured out how to do life in a way I apparently haven’t.
It seeps into my daily routines until one day I realize I’ve been stuck on autopilot for months —oh god— it’s been years since I graduated. And that’s how it begins: the spiral.
How to have a Quarter-Life Crisis Crashout
-Step 1: Hate your job but don’t quit it
Realize, with a sickening, sinking clarity, that the whole 9–5 thing actually sucks. That your commute, your teams pings, your carefully worded emails—none of it feels like a life. You go to work, you come home, you scroll tiktok until your brain turns to static, then you sleep just enough to do it all over again. Scroll linkedin or indeed like they’re dating apps. Click “save job” like it’s a prayer. And thw whole time toy with the horrifying reality that maybe the career path you committed to at 18 isn’t actually it.
-Step 2: Sign up for a marathon or move to a new city or book a trip or pick up a new hobby (or all the above)
In a desperate attempt to feel something again, you throw yourself into something slightly reckless. Sign up for a marathon even though you haven’t run more than two miles in years. Or move to a new city only to realize you hate it. Or drop thousands booking a trip across the world to “find yourself” in a foreign city (maybe more than once). Or decide that this is the moment to finally get into some obscure skill that will cost more money than you anticipated. Tell everyone “I just needed something for myself.”
-Step 3: Compare yourself to everyone (including yourself)
Your feed is a conveyor belt of milestones: engaged, married, baby, promotion, move abroad, award, another degree, dream house. The dopamine hit of other people’s success burns for half a second before curdling into pure envy. Surely somehow you slept through an important adult orientation session. Not only is it just people you know, but the versions of yourself you could’ve been. It’s a grotesque little game of what if and you always lose. Because no matter which life you imagine, it’s shinier and more complete than the one you have.
-Step 4: Realize how fast time is passing & begin to spiral
You glance at a calendar and realize, with the force of a brick, that ten years have actually passed. A whole decade. The kid you babysat is in highscool. You’re officially older than most of your favorite book characters. Strangers view you as an adult now. You are closer to having kids than being a kid. And later is here and you still haven’t figured out those “later problems.” Oh, and you’re almost 30.
-Step 5: Reach existential crisis and crashout
They promised your twenties would be the best years of your life! Nights out, adventures, freedom! But you? You are just bloody miserable. You don’t know who you are, what you’re doing with your life—You don’t even know what you should do with your life. Meanwhile everyone else is apparently thriving. You see this on the little screen in your hand, in between scrolling for a new job and looking at grad schools of course, while you sit alone eating takeout and binging your show. Then ask yourself these questions: What am I doing with my life? Is it too late to start over? Did I waste my twenties already? Why didn’t anyone warn me this would happen?!
Now crashout xoxo (please see Kristen’s Hot Girls Guide To Crashing Out)
At some point, in the middle of all the spiraling and grasping, you wake up to an unnerving horror: Your life is unbearably ordinary. Worse—you are unbearably ordinary. And this is truly what the crisis is over.
University was a fever dream you didn’t know you were living through until it ended. A toxic rollercoaster of adrenaline fueled by parties, flings, and the first taste of freedom. Adulthood is coming down from the high.
I dreamed of adulthood as this vast, glittering expanse with freedom, stability, money, aand a self finally realized. So when life first slowed, I needed this calm. I have favorite cleaning products now. I rsvp “maybe” to events and secretly pray they get canceled.
It’s not just that my life is boring. I am boring. And I am left grieving the old me that knew fun and excitement.
It feels like a betrayal, though I can’t name who betrayed me. Maybe the world. Maybe time. Maybe me.
Tips for surviving a quarter-life crisis
-you cannot become everything all at once
this is not to say you cannot be many things, but you cannot have one foot in and one foot out. you have to make a decision on who you want to be and put in effort towards that and not worry about all the versions of yourself you might not be. if you don’t make progress towards one for fear of losing the others, you will lose them all.
-let yourself mourn the person you were
you are not the same person you were at twenty. you never will be again. the college version of me was messy and reckless and unbearably alive. i adore her, but i know she was not a sustainable version. growing into a more mature version of yourself does not mean you cannot miss the version you were.
-build a life that actually feels like yours
so much of our lives are led by direction. now as adults we are for the first time, completely directionless on exactly what next steps should be. it’s easy to fall into autopilot. to work the job you hate because it’s what you studied and the first job you got, to live in a city you don’t love because it’s where you ended up, to follow paths you never truly chose. sometimes the bravest thing you can do is admit this isn’t working. have a single honest conversation with yourself about what you actually want and allow yourself to know that change is possible.
-find meaning in the smallest places
as kids there was a subtle magic to everything. having meaning in life doesn’t always need to be these grand moments. take a walk at dawn and notice the colors in the sky. read a book you completely lose yourself in. laugh over something ridiculous with a friend. the smallest of moments can make the most mundane of days special.
-know that you’ll never feel entirely “ready”
you have to do it scared. you have to do it uncertain. there will always always be a block if you wait for the perfect moment. and that is just the reality of being human. you will never reach a perfect moment where fear disappears, clarity arrives, and the timing is just right. put one foot in front of the other and go for it.
No one is going to hand you the life you want. You are the only one who can decide whether to do something with your life or let it pass you by. You have to make a choices in ordinary days, in half-formed decisions, in the moments no one else see. And you’ll have to make them again and again, for the rest of your life. You are going to mess up, you are going to fail, and you will have regrets. But one day you’ll look back and realize you either tried or you didn’t. And that is what will be the sum of the life you lived.
It’s you, or it’s no one.
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remembering that I‘m not the only one crashing out is actually helping a lot
Perfect for my mental breakdown before bed 🩷