Not to get all Dramatic, but...

Today I was thinking about some of the reasons that it sucks to be in your 20s. I guess I should add a disclaimer by pointing out that I have never been in my 30s, so I don't know if that could suck more. But I kind of doubt it. And also, I'm sure not everyone in their 20s feels the way I do and I am OK with that.

Like a lot of other little girls, I couldn't wait to be older. I wanted to act older, dress older, look older and do things that older girls would do. Part of this stemmed from the uncontrollable fact that I was born in August. Because of this, I was always the last of all my friends to do anything. The last to get my driver's license, the last to turn 18 and 21, and I think I was even the last to get my period and definitely the last to have sex. What can I say? I was a late bloomer and all those scare tactics in sex-ed worked on me. Maybe if my parents weren't so set on me being class of '99 rather than 2000, things would have turned out differently. I would have been the older, cooler one...But no, they couldn't wait to get me out of the house and into kindergarten!

But now that I'm in my [mid?] 20s, I worry about cancer and STD's. Where's the fun in that?

The first thing about being a twenty-something is that you finally have to admit to yourself that even though you might have actually known everything in your teens, you don't anymore. You start to realize that the more you learn, the less you actually know. That this world is a great big place and no one has all the answers. And when you pass a certain age and realize that you're older than your parents were when they started having kids, you start to understand that no matter how much your childhood sucked, your parents were young and just as stupid as you, and they did the best they could. For whatever reason, that was a hard one to grasp.

One of the worst things about being in your 20s, is something I think the majority of my friends are going through. We either don't know what it is we really want to be doing with our lives, or we're working demeaning jobs, or just jobs that we don't like, or we know what we want but can't figure out a way to get there, or some combination of all those things. We are putting in our *time* and/or climbing that cliche "ladder" to the top, or maybe just continuing to job-hunt and lean on our oh-so-supportive boyfriends like me. I don't think this is something that just disappears when one turns 30, but I do think at that point you at least have enough experience to help give you a leg up. Maybe?

I'm 26. I have a bachelor's degree from a fancy private school where I was taught to value ethics and be an advocate for social justice, yet I'm unemployed, my dad pays for my car insurance and sucky health insurance that doesn't really cover me in California. The best/only job offer I've had lately has been a personal errand runner at the "competitive" rate of $10 per hour with no benefits and an hour commute each way. When does it get better?

I went to the dermatologist today because at 26 I still battle with bouts of my on-and-off again lover, Acne. Hey, at least I can always count on that! I went to the doc for one thing and came out with yet another mole on my back biopsied. I've had quite a few moles taken to the lab in my life. Some turned out to be fine, some turned out to have abnormalities. Now I wait and see if it could be cancer. "Pre-cancer," I think is what they call it. What the hell is "pre-cancer" anyway?

Hi, my name is Rachel, I'm 26 and I have pre-cancer.

Yeah, that sounds about right.