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9 Things No One Tells You About Being Over 25

Search your feelings. You know it to be true.

Search your feelings. You know it to be true.

Supposedly, with age comes wisdom. Here’s some wisdom I’ve learned after being 25 for almost a year. Your mileage may vary.

1. Being constantly tired and/or sleepy. How many hours a night do you sleep? The average is 6-8, and some poor students or overnight workers get 4 or less, but no matter how many hours you’re under or how many naps you take to compensate, you’re always tired. You’re tired at work, you’re tired at home, you’re tired at parties, you’re tired at dates, and for no apparent reason. Tired is no longer a state of your health. It just becomes part of your personality as a twenty-something.

2. You can’t eat the same food you did as a teenager. Granted, you still want to and you still do against your better judgment, but usually one of two things happen: (1) your body no longer digests it properly and you end up with a stomachache, heartburn, or gas (2) it doesn’t taste the same and you no longer like it. For instance, I used to eat Ramen noodles with little salad shrimp in them after school if there weren’t leftovers. I ate one bite of shrimp Ramen earlier this year and threw the entire lot in the garbage while contemplating removing my tongue. Your body chemistry pretty much stops making sense and all kinds of things switch on you without warning.

3. You become horrifically impatient. Doesn’t matter what you’re doing, with whom, or why, but it can’t happen fast enough. Old lady driver? You want to run her off the road, cackling all the way. Post office worker? Jump across the counter and punch in the buttons yourself to make them go faster. Fast food drive thru? You could kill the chicken, pluck it, gut it, and cook it faster than these clowns. Everything feels like it’s happening in Zack Snyder slow-mo and you feel like going off on a Jim Carrey ‘Liar Liar’ rant every time someone does something in more time than you feel it requires.

4. The thought of turning thirty makes you have panic attacks. No matter how many years you have between now and then, you’re convinced you will die alone surrounded by cats in your bed and no one will find your body for days and you will have the emptiest funeral ever. No matter what you’ve done, it isn’t enough. You have to accomplish so much more with your life in only a few short years and it feels like you will never get there. Whether it’s having kids, getting promoted, traveling the world, or any of the other thousands of things you want to do before kicking the bucket, you feel that if you don’t get them done, you will have dishonored your entire family. Dishonor on you, dishonor on your cow, the whole nine yards.

5. The harder you try to save money, the faster it evaporates out of your wallet. You have bills. Some bills you have every month and every year, others just congeal out of nowhere and steal precious pennies every single day. Blow a tire? That’s $200 minimum, unless you buy a used replacement. Forget to pay a bill on time? Extra $35 late fee. Renew your website’s hosting? That’s $50. Oil change? Anywhere from $18-30. You’re hemorrhaging money and the harder you try to save by staying indoors and eating leftovers, the faster it seems to leak out.

6. Strangers’ children turn you into a crotchedy 60-year old. Not the cute fat-faced babies in strollers who smile at you or the friendly toddlers that say the darndest things. It’s the bratty ones who wail and scream that they want candy in the supermarket, or kick the back of your seat in a movie theater, or snap at their way-too-docile-and-understanding mothers in a snotty voice. At the mere sight of these cretins, you want to whip off your belt like Grandad from The Boondocks and teach them a lesson they will never forget. You get the urge to put the fear of God in bad children when you were previously more patient or sympathetic to them.

7. The holidays no longer excite you. Granted, you’re happy to see your extended family and stuff pounds of delicious food into your face and exchange goodies, but it’s nowhere near the same as when you were a kid or a teenager. Christmas is nice, but no one gets up at the crack of dawn to race over to a tree. You sort of just slouch out of your rooms, make breakfast, and get there when you get there. This is probably a lot more varied because everyone has their holiday traditions, but since your priorities have changed over the years and you can usually afford to buy yourself whatever you want thanks to your job, there isn’t much reason to wake up super early for opening presents unless you have children of your own or if your household has little ones staying overnight.

8. Dating is a chore. Male or female, tall or short, dating is working your last nerve. On the female side of things, you notice your competition way more in your mid-twenties. You get irritated walking around shopping or running errands when you see someone looking exceptionally hot, regardless of if they’re with their boyfriend or girlfriend because they’re still willing to put in the effort and you look plain by comparison. Makeup, getting your hair and nails done, waxing and shaving, finding the right clothes to wear in case you do get asked out are a monotonous, expensive pain-in-the-ass. Half the time you don’t want to be bothered with a date just because there is so much involved in trying to meet a nice person and hook him/her.

As for the male side of things, it’s hard to meet girls who aren’t already taken or who don’t have flashing signs on their foreheads that say ‘This is so not going to work in the long run.’ Your newfound impatience makes it way harder to sift out the good from the bad, all the while the multiple first date costs can rack up in just weeks.

After all, there’s a reason almost 50% of Americans are single these days.

9. If you didn’t already, you now cuss like a sailor. Regardless of if you grew up with bad language in your household, for some reason, everything that doesn’t involve small children or a professional situation at work requires the F-word. You’re not sure how you got to that point, either, but something about being over 25 means you curse often and with relish to every foul word that exits your lips. Bizarrely, half the time you’re not even angry, you just do it out of pure habit. It’s not a bad thing as long as you’re still an intelligent, decent human being, but it is kind of weird that it seemed to come from out of nowhere.

What do you think, my dear twenty-somethings? Anything on this list ring a bell, or am I way off base?