Why does turning 25 feel like a mid life crisis?!

Or should I say, a quarter-life crisis...

Twenty-five is a rough age. All your life, you look forward to being 18 then twenty-one so you're allowed to go to bars and legally drink (worldwide) Then you spend the next few years being glad that you're above that 18-20 crowd, more mature and way cool'er. Twenty-two is cool, Twenty-three is cool, Twenty-four is cool and then BAM....You turn twenty-five and suddenly, it's not so cool anymore. 

You're only five years away from being thirty. You start analysing every aspect of your life. Where is it going? Why aren't I married? Why don't I have kids? Chances are by now, you know several couples who are getting married and several couples who have children. Then you start to think "well my parents were married by now" or "all my uncles and aunts were married by now" or "wait my parents already had TWO kids by the time they were twenty-five!"

Then you start thinking about all the things in life that you haven't done yet. I still haven't traveled to Brazil...I've not bought a house and I still would quite like to be able to skateboard. 

Maybe this doesn't happen to everyone, but it certainly happened to me at 24...I always said that I would never move back to London because I'd miss all my family and friends back in Cambridgeshire and despised the Tube battle of getting to work everyday and paying £800 a month for a tiny box flat when I can have a beautiful house with a garden and 2 cats back home. 

When I turned twenty-four all of a sudden I became extremely jealous of anyone who didn't have someone controlling their life... I felt suffocated, stopped laughing as much and unappreciated. And for people that know me, I laugh a lot I needed something and I didn't know what it was.

I started analysing anything and everything in my life. I analysed my friends, job, appearance, family and the person I was in a relationship with. Are they the one? If not, why am I wasting my time? I'm almost thirty. What if I'm thirty and all my friends are married and I'm not?" 

And so, the quest began: what can I do to ensure that, if I get married and settle down in five years, I can take the plunge down the one-way aisle without any fear or regrets? 

I loved him, but I knew deep down that the thought of marrying him didn't excite me like it did 4 years ago and when you start questioning if they are tall enough, look through your recently played tunes on your ipod... You know something is up. So why was I with him? Was I just afraid of being alone? What if my future husband was out there and I'm missing out because I'm wasting time with my current boyfriend? 

The most exhausting year of my life, there is nothing you can take or do to make that constant searching for a fix in your head stop....And there is was. Done. 

After 4 and half years of living together, I ended it and moved out back to London.

(You don't find unicorns with rainbow belly's in Cambridgeshire)

All in all, I think twenty-five is an age where you discover who you really are.What I mean by that is finding who we REALLY are; 

Today I turned 25, my first birthday as an adult without a boyfriend, a date or any shackles...

 London has never felt so exciting.