Picture this, a twenty-year-old woman unable to move or get out of bed, recently fired from her bar job. She’s decided to drop out of media makeup, leaving a somewhat promising career in wig making and prosthetics, (okay, a bit of a lie there, she was very bad at both in retrospect) and now forced to spend her mornings getting shouted at over eggs by rich snobs in a fancy hotel. If Icarus could experience that summer, there would be no need for wax wings.

Yes, that was me. I have thousands of jokes about that time, about how I was so bedridden I couldn’t function without watching 2005 Pride and Prejudice; or how I was the original “Would you still love me if I was a worm,” girl, based on the fact I went a whole two weeks without moving unless it was to force myself to eat. I could spend this personal essay ragging on and bullying myself, but I’d like to focus on a fascinating little bit of light I found during a rather bleak time.

“I’m a university student.”

I’d use it to justify everything to myself. Did I miss the bus? Lay in bed for so long that my teeth shrivelled in my mouth? Buy the seventh takeaway that week? that’s fine I’m a ‘student.’

You can practically hear the sparkles.

University Student was a title I latched on to, a bullet in my arsenal I could use to fight against low-paying jobs, rude customers, and mental health problems. It’s okay I hate my life right now because my purpose is Student, life won’t always be like this, I’m still learning. This was a title I would rely on for the next four years through family problems, financial panic, and even more mental hardship.

It’s okay that I hate life right now, at least I got a 62% on my coursework, I’m in my academic weapon era!

Now, four years later, I work part-time at an escape room. I have recently graduated with a 2:1 in Creative Writing and I’ve moved into a flat with my wonderful fiancée. Everything should be great now, right? I’m an adult, ready to make my mark on the world. The training wheels are off, the rocket has launched, and the final bell has rung. I have spent my entire life training for this, right?

Right?

The very real fact of the matter is everything that could be dusted off with the brush of a student doesn’t work anymore. Missing the bus could mean losing my job. Lying in bed with rotting teeth was a growing dental bill. Buying another takeaway is a race to see what I can kill first, my body or my bank account. None of these were funny uni stories or life lessons that could be laughed at, they were symptoms of very real mental problems I could no longer romanticise as part of the uni experience.

I was now a part of ‘The Real World!’ the allusive place every adult would go on and on about when talking about life after uni. I had always hated it when people talked about suddenly entering the ‘real world’ as if I was living in some kind of suspended utopia and not struggling to pay for food and necessities like everyone else. (although, I don’t think many people would class Costa iced coffee as a necessity) Was the true plot twist of my young adult life that I had been in the ‘real world’ the entire time? but I was using university to romanticise bad financial decisions? No, I was struggling like everyone else, but trying to get a degree while working a part-time job. Keep in mind I was lucky enough to have a partner who worked full-time and covered most of the bills and expenses, anyone who wasn’t so lucky had it a million times harder.

So, seeing as I had been experiencing the real world while being a student, it wasn’t like I suddenly entered it, or even had a Bridgeton-style debut into adult life. Instead, I found myself entering a void, unsure where left or right, up, or down, heart or mind was. Now I was exploring an entirely new character arc. An arc where, outside the context of being a student, I was asking myself,

Who am I?

For those around me, it’s obvious. I’m Isabelle, a graduate trying to find a full-time job. Others may jump to my personality, how I’m bubbly and creative, and how I use tarot cards to solve all my problems. Very few may point to the fact that I’m a Capricorn sun, Taurus moon and Cancer rising. But in my point of view, I simply don’t know. The map of who I am is ripped up and lost… or maybe just different.

Could it be said that maybe all that has changed is simply my employment status? that instead of being a student, I’m now just a graduate? No longer will I be spending my days navigating the library and the woes of Harvard referencing, I will spend my time fighting against everyone else who thought getting a university degree would make them ‘stand out’, with nothing else in my weaponry but a decaf iced latte and the ability to write from a tree’s point of view. It’s hard to be optimistic when life just seems so determined to drop-kick you through death’s doors.

So really, the main question is. What is next? And for everyone reading this who may relate, what can you do? I’ll be honest, at the big old age of twenty-three, I haven’t quite worked it out. Some friends of mine have gone straight into master’s degrees, a goal I hope to complete myself one day, but I’m not quite ready for. Others have gone travelling, another goal of mine that I simply don’t have the financial ability to complete. I realistically only know two people who are working in their field of study, and one of them is a compulsive liar.

If anything has worked though, or at least given me a tiny bit of sanity, it has been reminding myself, what twenty-something-year-old has any of this worked out? Look at the first couple of seasons of Friends or any reality TV show in existence, Rachel was twenty-four and working as a barista after calling off her wedding in the first season. Aren’t our first years after university supposed to be the real-time, we mess up? When we nearly join pyramid schemes by accident or spend our money on concerts even though we should put it towards food? When we crash cars, lose house keys and break hearts along the way? Yes, that all sounds terrifying, and all things that nobody should strive to do, but in facing the consequences we learn and strive to do better. In a world that will only accept perfection on the first try, isn’t there beauty in being a constant work in progress? In never being perfect or exceptional, but just simply being?

Life will always just be life. I will never be the perfect adult, but I can be the ever-changing me. Not quite A caterpillar, a butterfly or even a cocoon; but some slime that keeps forming and reforming with every passing day.