The Pressure Years
Behind nothing, ahead of no one.
The Pressure Years.
No one calls them that. But they should.
No one tells you that’s what they are while you’re in them. But you feel it. A shift. A weight. The slow tightening of an invisible thread.
It starts with a question.
What do you want to be when you grow up?
You’re six, so you say something impossible—astronaut, pop star, dolphin trainer. People smile. They call it ambition.
You’re sixteen, and the question stays the same. But now, the answers are graded. The stakes are real. And somehow, between learning how to parallel park and figuring out why your face keeps betraying you, you’re expected to choose a future you won’t regret.
Then come the other questions.
Where are you going to college?
What’s the plan after that?
Are you dating anyone?
No one truly cares about the answer. But you do.
Because you don’t have one.
And just like that, the clock starts ticking.
There’s no ceremony. No official start date. Just the slow, creeping weight of expectation—that feeling that you’re supposed to be somewhere by now. Somewhere better. Somewhere certain.
The lie isn’t just that you have to succeed.
It’s that you have to succeed on (or before) schedule.
People tell you these are the best years of your life. They don’t say why. They don’t mention the low-grade panic of feeling like you’re already falling behind. Or the creeping suspicion that everyone else got the instructions and you somehow missed the email.
Instead, they hand you the timeline. The invisible checklist. The myth that tells you you’re supposed to know yourself in your teens, build something in your twenties, have it all by your thirties. That success—whatever that means—comes with a deadline. That if you’re not where you’re “supposed” to be, you’ve already failed.
But who decides where you’re supposed to be?
Who made this timeline?
And why does no one ever seem to question it?
The Pressure Years are real. The pressure to know. To prove. To have it all. But they’re built on a myth—one that convinces you life is a race, time is running out, and if you don’t hurry up, you’ll never catch up.
The finish line? That’s the lie.
And still, most of us sprint.
But what if you were never behind to begin with?
The Teens.
They don’t tell you it starts this early.
The pressure, I mean.
It begins so quietly, you almost miss it. A question here, a suggestion there. Little nudges disguised as encouragement. What do you want to be when you grow up? stops being cute and then suddenly you’re sixteen and the question doesn’t land the same way.
It gets heavier. Stickier. The room doesn’t fill with warm smiles when you answer. Instead, there’s a pause. A quick, expectant silence.
Well, you need to do something practical.
That’s a tough industry, you know.
You just need a plan.
At sixteen, you need permission to literally do anything—go to the bathroom, cross the street, be a person in the world but now you’re also expected to chart your entire future with confidence and clarity… with no margin for error of course.
You’re not just expected to know who you are. You’re expected to pick a direction—and start becoming someone worth clapping for, all while also juggling puberty, geometry, and the emotional minefield of being a teenager.
So you try. You pick something that sounds right in a sentence. You learn how to smile and say it like you mean it. You try to act like you’re sure, even when you’re not. Especially when you’re not.
And once you pick? You’d better hope you got it right.
And underneath it all, there’s the quiet panic of permanence. That this choice—this version of you—is going to stick… FOREVER.
That the music you love now will always be the music. That your high school friends will be there for every major milestone. That you will definitely never, ever turn into your parents.
I’m thirty-eight. I listen to music I used to make fun of. I have exactly one friend from high school that I still talk to, which is impossible to imagine in your teens, when your friends feel like permanent limbs. And last week, I caught myself saying, I just think it’s a nice neighborhood, which is something I once swore I’d never care about.
You’re made to feel like your future is something you can actually get wrong.
The worst part is—you don’t not want a plan. You just don’t know how to want something in a way that feels real. And so, you make choices like they’re final.
Pick the right school. Pick the right career. Pick the right person.
Your first love should be epic. Your friendships should be forever. You should know exactly where you’re going and how to get there—while also remembering to “enjoy your youth.”
The contradiction is exhausting.
No one tells you that most people don’t marry the person they loved in high school. That your job won’t be the same one you retire from. That your friendships will shift, your dreams will morph, your entire sense of self will crack open and rearrange itself more times than you can count.
No one tells you how much you’ll change. How many times your life will come undone and remake itself. That the person you are right now isn’t the final draft. Hell, it’s barely a rough outline.
But when you’re a teenager, everything feels like it matters, like every choice is a defining moment.
You think if you just get it right, you’ll be safe.
You won’t be… but you will be okay.
Because nothing you pick right now has to be forever. You’re allowed to change your mind. To start over. To not know. You’re allowed to look back one day and laugh at how seriously you took it all. Because that’s part of it too.
You’re not behind.
You’re just at the beginning.
The Twenties.
You start your twenties assuming you’ll wake up one day and feel like an adult.
Instead, you spend most of it pretending.
Pretending to be good at jobs you barely understand. Pretending to love people you’re not sure about. Pretending that brunch and credit card debt count as a financial plan.
You perform competence in a way that would be impressive if it weren’t so exhausting.
You buy work clothes that make you feel like a fraud. You fake enthusiasm in meetings. You walk with purpose through office hallways even though you’re just going to the bathroom.
And then there’s the pressure. Not just to know who you are, but to prove it.
You should have a five-year plan. A serious relationship. A skincare routine that prevents future regret.
People your age are getting promoted. Engaged. Buying houses. Meanwhile, you’re googling “how long can you keep chicken in the fridge before you die.”
But you don’t talk about that.
Instead, you curate. You post the good parts. The brunches, the vacations, the career moves that sound better than they actually are. You make your life look intentional.
You say things like “Things are going really well for me right now,” while quietly wondering if this is actually supposed to feel good.
And the irony? Everyone else is doing the same thing.
You’re all faking competence at the same time, in different fonts.
At some point, the cracks start to show.
You start measuring success in new ways. Not by how far you’ve come, but by how far you’ve fallen behind. Who’s married. Who’s having kids. Who has “financial security,” a phrase you should understand by now, but don’t.
For me, it was a decade spent chasing a version of success that didn’t belong to me. I gave up my life to other people—literally. I spent my twenties as a personal assistant, handing over my time, my energy, my identity for a career built on promises that were never kept.
I kept rushing to prove myself for a life I can now see I wasn’t remotely ready for.
And then my thirties arrived. And I realized I was exactly where I started—except now, my twenties were gone.
At some point, it starts to hit you—the math isn’t adding up.
You were told that by twenty-five, you’d be settled. Thriving. Ahead of the game.
Instead, twenty-five comes and goes, and you still feel like you’re waiting for something to start.
But no one ever told you… this is it. The “figuring it out” part isn’t a phase… it’s life.
And yet, you keep playing the part. Because everyone else is, too.
Until, eventually, exhaustion replaces ambition.
You start to wonder, who am I actually trying to convince?
And what if I don’t even want the life I’ve been working so hard to prove I have?
The Thirties.
No one tells you that the pressure doesn’t let up in your thirties. It just stops performing.
It trades its megaphone for a measuring stick.
Less “Where are you headed?”
More “Why aren’t you there yet?”
By now, the world assumes you’ve arrived. Not because you have—but because the grace period is over.
This is the decade where the timeline starts pretending to be your personality. You’re supposed to be stable. Secure. Sure.
A job that sounds good in conversation. A relationship that looks good in photos. A kitchen with matching dishware and a drawer full of takeout menus you’re slightly embarrassed to own. A life that looks good in the kind of way that doesn’t even try anymore. Effortless. Settled.
No one asks, “Are you happy?” They ask where you’re living, who you’re with, what you’re doing now. The questions are polite. The expectations aren’t.
And suddenly, everything feels like a referendum.
If you’re single, it must mean something.
If you’re partnered, you’re expected to turn it into something.
If you’re childless, you’re running out of time.
If you have kids, you’d better make them your entire identity—but not in a way that’s annoying.
If you’re changing careers, you’re lost.
If you’re staying put, you’re stuck.
If you’re resting, you’re lazy.
If you’re striving, you’re never satisfied.
There’s no right answer—only the sense that you should have one by now.
But there’s still this quiet ache underneath it all. Not panic—just a lingering hum that shows up in traffic, at dinner parties, when you catch your own reflection on a Zoom call and wonder, “Is that really me?”
And sure, you’ve stopped performing in the same way. You don’t care about looking impressive anymore—you just don’t want to look like you’ve fallen behind.
The comparison is quieter now, but it cuts deeper. It’s not about strangers with glossy lives online—it’s your actual friends. The ones getting promoted. Getting married. Getting pregnant on purpose. The ones who know what to do with their tax returns and talk about refinancing like it’s foreplay.
For me, it didn’t come in a single moment. It crept in through the cracks. Just gradually. Quietly. I stopped replying to texts out of guilt. I stopped showing up for people who never asked how I was doing. I stopped saying yes just to feel needed.
And in that space, I started noticing how much of my life had been shaped around proving I was worth keeping.
How many friendships I’d maintained just because they’d been around a long time. How much energy I spent trying to look like I was thriving.
How many of my decisions were made for a version of myself I didn’t even like.
There’s pressure, still, but it’s not to “prove” anymore. It’s to sustain. To manage. To hold it together. But now it’s internal. It’s personal. It’s about deciding whether to stay in the life you built—even if that life no longer fits.
Because maybe the point of your thirties isn’t arriving. Maybe it’s noticing where you actually are, and realizing you don’t need to stay just because you’ve unpacked.
You can love people and still outgrow the version of yourself who loved them.
You can mourn a dream and still admit you never really wanted it.
You can build something beautiful and still say, “This isn’t mine.”
That’s not failure. That’s clarity.
You’re still not sure where you’re going. You just finally stopped pretending this was it.
The Pressure Years.
No one tells you when they end.
There’s no ‘final boss.’ No surprise party for functional adulthood. Just a slow shift—barely noticeable at first—when the questions start sounding less like check-ins and more like verdicts.
At 6: What do you want to be?
At 16: Where are you going to college?
At 26: What’s next?
At 36: Are you happy?
The questions keep coming. The stakes just change.
And eventually, you realize there was never a right answer.
But that doesn’t stop you from trying to come up with one anyway.
Because by now, you’ve seen enough lives take shape. You’ve watched people settle down. Change course. Burn out. Rebrand. You’ve seen the ones who got everything they wanted. And the ones who wanted things they never said out loud.
Some days, it feels like you’re behind. Other days, you realize there’s no one in front of you.
Same pressure. Different outfit.
You spent years trying to pass a test no one was grading. Trying to stay on track.
Trying to convince everyone—your parents, your friends, yourself—that you were getting it right.
But the timeline was never real, the pressure was never proof. And falling behind? That was just marketing. Bad marketing at that.
The truth isn’t some grand, life-altering revelation. The truth is just too ordinary to sell.
Some people peak at 22. Some don’t hit their stride until 50. Some follow the map and still feel lost. Some never follow a single rule and somehow end up exactly where they need to be.
Because the truth is—there’s nothing to catch up to. There’s no final version of you that unlocks the rest of your life.
There’s just this.
Wherever you are.
Whatever age you are.
Whatever part you’re in.
Only this time, you don’t owe anyone an answer.
Not because you’ve figured it out.
But because you finally know—no one else ever did either.
File Under: Thought I was late, turns out I was early to nothing.
The Ash Files—Where life’s unexpected moments get filed away—sometimes neatly, sometimes under “figure it out later.” From writer/creator ASH, expect weekly musings, honest stories, and a reminder that no one has life entirely figured out [least of all me].✨
you are my favorite thing i’ve ever found on the internet!
I literally thought to myself today - isn’t it interesting that we have all these rights of passage to go through. And then when we’ve hit them all, we’re on the other side like ‘I didn’t need to go through any of them.’
Now I see them as invitations, but going through them… they were not. That pressure is such a great way to put it!