Recently I learned a new term: the Quarter-Life Crisis.
What’s Happening?
Recent days have not been good or bad. Something just feels wrong.
The best description is a huge, quiet emptiness. It feels like hiding in the bathroom during a loud party. I cannot hear or feel anything. There is only a ringing in my ears.
An alarm wakes me up every day. I sit at my desk and look at a screen. Then I go home. Everything is normal, but nothing feels real.
This emptiness feels like an unresolved fog.
I have many questions. What do I want from my job? Is it just a salary? What city will I live in? Who will I spend my life with? These questions float around like ghosts. They have no answers, just a growing sense of pressure.
I also face a flood of memories from the past. I think about someone I pushed away years ago. I was afraid of commitment. The details of our conversations are blurry now. Only a dull ache of regret remains.
Moments where I could have been braver or more honest are now mistakes I cannot fix.
Memory is cruel. It does not fade slowly. It is like an old photograph. The key details flake away first. A blurry outline and a feeling called regret are all that is left.
I am stuck in the middle. The past pushes from behind and the future is unclear ahead. I cannot move.
At first, I thought I was being dramatic. I am only in my twenties. How could I have a midlife crisis? I asked an AI.
Gemini gave me an interesting point of view.
It said a midlife crisis is a retrospective despair. The feeling comes from the past. It is pain over facts that are set in stone and cannot be changed. My pain comes from a fear of future possibilities. There are too many options. I do not know the right path. I do not even know where I want to go.
This explanation convinced me. But these labels are like horoscopes, whether ‘quarter-life crisis’ or ‘midlife crisis.’ They only offer a false sense of belonging. Sorting pain into categories seems to make it understandable and manageable.
The truth is that this feeling is always there, like a shadow. It just changes shape and asks different questions at different stages of life.
How Did I Get Here?
This crisis is not a purely bad thing.
It is like an alarm that has been ringing for a long time. I can finally hear it. It forces me to stop my daily numbness. I have to look at the path I am on and at myself. What do I want to escape? What kind of person do I want to become?
The answers to these big questions do not arrive like a food delivery order.
It is more like searching for something in a dark room. You grope around. Sometimes you hit the corner of a table. It hurts badly. Then you change direction and continue. You find an answer. A few days later you realize it is not what you want. You throw it away and start over.
It is so hard to know what you want. I have a friend with a clear view of life. She believes everything is a matter of ‘I want it, then I get it.’ I envy her certainty. Her words show she knows what ‘I want’ means.
I cannot even take the first step. I do not know myself at all.
So I play the part of a Sad Bard here, singing about my confusion. In this era, figuring out who you are, what you value, and how you want to live seems like a mystical art.
My peers seem to have all the standard answers. This makes it especially difficult.
They announce their happiness on social media. They got promoted, bought a house, got married, had a baby. It is like they are inviting me to copy their homework.
I look at their neat answer sheets. I recognize every word. But I feel a deep, instinctive resistance.
I could copy it word for word and submit it. But I know the score I received would not represent the real me.
What Do I Do About It?
The internet is full of advice. Know yourself, accept yourself, live in the moment, find hobbies, enjoy the process. These words are all correct. They are like a universal ointment, but it does not cure my ailment.
I have tried many things to pull myself out of this pit.
I bought a guitar. It was exciting for the first few weeks. The enthusiasm quickly faded into the pain of practicing scales.
I went cycling on the weekend. The wind dried the sweat on my face. In that moment, life felt worthwhile. Then Monday’s subway ride returned everything to normal.
I even tried meditation. My thoughts were more active than I was. They started a debate in my head.
The happiness from these efforts is like a brief firework. After the bright display comes a deeper silence. The unresolved feeling of crisis is an uninvited ghost. It appears in my room at any time. It easily washes away any joy I have gathered. It pulls me back to where I started.
I am best at one thing: internal conflict. A judge and a prisoner live in my head. They question, defend, and sentence each other 24 hours a day.
The real way out is not to find a final answer. It is not to force myself to be happy immediately. It is to first admit and accept my current situation. I am in a thick fog. I cannot see clearly. I cannot walk fast. I will even fall down.
Okay. I will leave it at that for now. When in a fog, walk slowly.
Disclaimer: Just a diary entry, my trivial complaint.