These Days: The Panic Years

No one told me my twenties would feel like a long weekend that slowly turns into Monday morning.

In the beginning, everything moved fast. Too fast to make sense of. There were always people — in my apartment, in my inbox, in my bed. Laughter echoed in taxis at 2 a.m., and every conversation felt like a doorway to something big. Life was made of noise — loud, loose, a little reckless — and I was right in the middle of it.

I didn’t need a plan — I needed a playlist. A bar charger. A half-decent excuse to stay out too late. I believed in momentum. I believed I had time. I let it all blur together because I thought the future could wait.

But it didn’t.

It shifted — not all at once, but slowly, like dusk bleeding into night.

Plans started needing calendars. Some friends stopped answering. The group chat got quieter. The people who once knew everything started to fade into people I scroll past now.

And I started to feel it — the silence. Not around me, but inside. The buzzing stopped. The light dimmed. I looked up one day and realized the version of myself I’d been pretending to be had outgrown me.

Now, I’m someone I don’t quite recognize. I speak more carefully. I need more space. I hold back. I’m quieter in rooms. I look in the mirror and don’t dislike what I see — I just don’t know him fully yet.

And when I look back, the old me is blurry too.

I remember stories but not the feeling. I see photos but can’t remember what I was thinking. I watch videos of myself laughing and feel like I’m watching a stranger who had fewer questions, lighter shoulders, eyes that hadn’t yet learned what quiet grief felt like.

He feels far away. Not gone — just unreachable.

Success has changed shape too. It used to mean being interesting, admired, loud enough to be noticed. Now I just want a life that feels still enough to breathe in. A quiet morning. A familiar face. A home that doesn’t feel like a waiting room.

I’ve been trying — in small, invisible ways. I go to work. I water my plants. I text back. I choose honesty when it’s easier to ghost. I say no more often. I leave when I’m tired. I let silence be silence. I try not to run from myself.

But I miss him sometimes — that boy who moved through the world like nothing could bruise him. Who believed connection was the default, not something earned or fought for.

I still listen to the same songs.

Joy Division came on the other night —

“These days, I feel like I’ve been used…”

And I just stood there.

It didn’t hurt, exactly. But it stayed.

A familiar ache, like waking up from a dream you wanted to remember.

Some songs aren’t just songs anymore. They’re versions of me I forgot how to access. They sound like cracked phone screens and hallway confessions, like someone else’s laugh inside my throat. They sound like memory and distance all at once.

These are the panic years.

Not loud panic. Just a quiet ache.

A constant recalibration of who I’m becoming, and a low mourning for the boy I no longer am.

A strange middle place — between someone I can’t remember and someone I haven’t met yet.

And still — I’m here.

Not where I thought I’d be.

Not who I thought I’d become.

But arriving, somehow.

Slowly. Quietly.

Maybe even honestly.

Maybe that’s what becoming is.

Not arrival, but soft erosion.

Not clarity, but noticing.

These days, I don’t want to be seen.

I just want to feel like I’ve come home —

to someone I might one day recognize...