The anticipation and the reality
The day’s almost here, a few days more before I finally turn 26, I literally can’t even recall where my teenage years or even my early 20s have gone into.
Half a decade has gone by since I completed my graduation but somehow it still feels like I was in college just yesterday.
I no longer have classes tomorrow, nor do I have exams coming on, I do not have to worry about my homework, or the maths lecture that I was most afraid of.
I no longer have unread messages or notifications or even contacts to call back, the urge to post pictures or status has also gone quite a while ago.
The dream of doing something different, something great has also shrunk by a large extent.
I now have different sets of responsibilities (far more serious ones) even though I’m still somewhat younger, naive and find myself clueless every now and then.
The expectations
On paper 26 is still quite young, the world already has a very specific template on how your 20’s or your mid twenties should be like— and most of it will make you feel like that somehow it’s your fault that your life is not the same as of that Instagram influencer, or the way how and why you’re feeling wrecked which should not be the case as these should be the best years of your life.
The onus is on you— why aren’t you feeling your best at this present moment, expecting everything should be perfect and should timely align with your age, as if we all are living the same life and have been handed the same cards.
For a lot of folks this perfect life isn’t a reality, even for me regardless of how much I’m grateful for this life, things are much different than I had thought or imagined of.
Though for me much of it was the consequence of my own intentional decision(s) or things I took part in or maybe opted out due to my inherent personality trait.
Regrets, moving out, and reminiscing the good times
As i turn 26 there are many things that I haven’t done or couldn’t do or experience which I somewhat regret1 at this point, while there are also things/interests which I did tried or invested my time in but couldn’t pursue any further due to some limitations or due to the sheer pressure of having so much stress and existing duties.
there are things like I wish I’d done differently— conversations which I avoided, moments when I said no out of my fear/anxiety, adventures I declined, people I should have held onto for longer, self respect that I lost, and pictures I didn’t took when we were together.
This year itself (mid 2025-2026) was much different from the last many years as we moved to a different city after living in the same place/house for more than a decade.
There was obviously emotional attachment involved and you are bound to miss a place where you’ve grown up and spent all your teenage years and early twenties.
You miss food, the people, the shops, the shop owners, the weather, and the place itself, although the idea to move to a different city wasn’t on anyone’s bucket list, neither we would have ever imagined or would have thought even in our wildest dreams that one fine day we (my family) will all soon have to pack our bags and never come back (like the way we want to) to the same place.
Although it wasn’t a all of a sudden decision that we took in an hour, we tried to adjust, at first going from point A to point B, then again to point A thinking all of this will soon get better and we will eventually going to be fine. But it didn’t worked and here we are living miles away from what I used to call home.
All the belongings are still there, maybe they still have some hope left behind (which we might have lost along the way) thinking that we will get back, and use them the way we used to use them when we were there.
The reason behind this shift was a big one, more specifically a medical reason/need that was somewhat impossible at the existing place, and the situation was such we didn’t wanted to take any further risks.
It was about my mother and her CKD, and the prognosis of the disease that made all of us move out.
A possible breakthrough and the future forward:
The thing about moving places is it has two sides, the negatives which I’ve already talked about, the positive side is such that you have an opportunity, opportunity to change yourself,
and change the way people perceive you or had perceived you all your life, based on how you look, behave, talk, act, or even how you move.
When you live at a place for a very long time especially where you’ve grown up and have a personality equivalent of a ‘house lizard’ (introvert, shy, and anxious) you have no room but to obey to your fears, everyone around you, your neighbors, your teachers, your friends, have an idea about how you function, especially your weaknesses.
They feed on your weakness (obviously not all), they intentionally make you feel that you lack and how different you are are from others, which then reinforces your fears even more, they keep validating and you keep obeying and the loop stays the same for years. (until a breakthrough happens.)
At this new place, I’m not carrying those people, nor those two faced friends, nobody knows about me, and nobody I knows about, and that itself is a win.
And this places me at a little more leverage to start afresh, also to start working on myself, and my fears, and to create a new image, a better one, of myself, for myself.
postscript:
Birthday was on 24th May, 2026, and this was written on 22nd May, but I felt that it needed some correction and some more things that should be added to this. and also for the fact I was publishing something after a year, so it should atleast be readable enough, if not good enough. I’m writing this postscript on 6TH of June 12:13am, and this makes it clear that I’m publishing it on 6th June. I know I’m late and I should’ve uploaded it on my birthday (an missed opportunity which I’ll regret and will add to my regrets list in next year’s birthday post).
Footnotes
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read the postscript you’ll know. ↩