Booby-Traps and Tear-Soaked Nights

I want to write a book. Now, I've never really been all that great at creative writing, but I would consider myself pretty capable of communicating something that I didn't have to make up by myself. In the case of this particular book on my mind, it would be drawn from personal and vicarious experience, and the content would be real, raw, and relevant.

I want to write a book about what to expect when you graduate college. You might be thinking, there are tons of books out there about that! Books that pretend to have all the answers about job hunting. Books that give options for delaying the real world. Books that encourage twentysomething girls to seek God first, then a husband, then babies (Have a career? What's that?), and twentysomething boys to marry a girl who wants nothing more in life than to submit to her husband and bear him children.

I read all these books, cover to cover. And yet here I am, just a year out of college, treading water and grasping for a hand to pull my exhausted body through the current that is trying its hardest to drown me. Those books did nothing for me, but why?

Probably because they weren't based on reality. They weren't based on what actually happened to a twentysomething and how they survived it. Those books are idealistic, and preach nice thoughts, but when reality crashes over you and your only means of survival are some unrealistic manuals for life written by someone trying to make a buck at your expense...well, drowning seems inevitable.

However, we have parents. We have friends in their 30s. We know people who survived being a twentysomething, and more likely than not, they barely kept their head above water for most of that time. But they survived.

I really wish I had someone tell me how to survive being a twentysomething when it doesn't involve being married before I graduate college, having mommy and daddy hand me job or a house, or staying in school for 10 years to become a doctor. How does the average person do it? How does the normal, middle-class twentysomething transition from the padded walls of the college to the booby-trap laden "real world" rushing at them?

Well, I don't have any answers, yet. But I do know how it feels, some things to watch out for, and how many tear-soaked nights it will take. And other people, who did it differently than me, will have insights I never had the priviledge of learning.

So this is my thought: These books we are encouraged to read don't have all the answers...but neither do I. But while I can't give solid answers (that's what those other books tried to do, and failed), I can leave behind the reassurance to other twentysomethings that someone else knows how it feels. It's going to hurt. You will cry...probably alot. You will deperately miss the friends that college easily handed to you and then just as easily ripped out from under you. It's going to feel like you are drowning, and it's going to feel like the struggling to get by will never end. And despite all of the hard stuff, some amazing things are going to happen in the midst of it, shaping who you end up being when you finally collapse on the shore, wiping the cruel water off your face.

I want to collect stories from twentysomethings. I want to hear how the people who got jobs handed them right out of college did it. Was it the luck of the draw, or did they do something brilliant to set themselves up for that? And either way, how did it feel to be a twentysomething and on your own? I want to hear how people who had a harder time figuring themselves out and finding a job than I did managed to keep their head above water and come out on the other side alive. I want to hear about those people who did manage to avoid the real world and go on an adventure. Did they love it, or was it hard as hell?

Maybe if I had read that book, one with a foundation in realism rather than idealism, maybe then I would have felt less alone in this whole process. Maybe if someone had told me that there isn't one way to be a twentysomething, I would have panicked less.

Maybe I will collect twentysomething stories someday, but first I need stop breathing in water and keep swimming toward the shore, however far away it may be.

Currently listening to: "Boston" by Augustana (Check out Imeem player at the bottom of the page)