What the Fuck Happened?

Maybe the “twenty” at the end of the four digits cursed us in a quiet way. Stole the years we were supposed to feel alive.

I slept the day before everything changed. One moment, I was celebrating the announcement — no classes for a while, stay home, stay safe — and I thought, finally. Two weeks of freedom. Two weeks away from boring lectures, away from the dragging routine. I smiled. I felt like a kid on an unexpected holiday.

But those two weeks stretched. They bled into months. Into years. Into something that felt like a lifetime.

I stepped out again, eventually. Walked the streets, breathed in air without a mask, laughed with friends like nothing had changed — but something had. Something deep. Something I couldn’t name. I was back, supposedly, yet it felt like I had never left that version of lockdown, the one in my chest.

Time moved like smoke — impossible to hold, impossible to stop. One moment it was 2020. The next, it's 2025. I blinked and five years vanished like dust in light.

And when I woke up — really woke up — I felt it. Regret. Grief. Not for someone else, but for me. For the person I used to be. For the child who vanished in the noise.

Why did everything change so quickly? Why can’t we go back to the old rhythm — slow mornings, soft afternoons, the kind of joy you don't even realize is joy until it’s gone?

I’m not who I was. I can feel it in the way I carry myself, in the weight behind my eyes. My emotions, my habits, my way of thinking — all rewired, almost without permission. I can’t bring the old me back. And that terrifies me.

What the fuck happened?

What did 2020 really give us, beyond survival? It took something too — our softness, our slowness, our youth. I thought I was a 13-year-old kid, just figuring things out. But suddenly, I’m past 20, past something I can't name. And I miss it — God, I miss it.

I miss the little TV with Barbie on the screen. Afternoon snacks. Toys scattered across the floor. Functioning without a phone. Feeling full without needing much at all.

Now, it’s just... fast. Everything. Too fast. So fast that I could cry just thinking about it. I miss the version of me that didn’t carry this weight. That only worried about bedtime, not bills and dreams and falling behind.

There’s so much responsibility now. So much worry. So many tears. What the fuck happened to us?

We became people we never planned to be. Maybe the “twenty” at the end of the four digits cursed us in a quiet way. Stole the years we were supposed to feel alive. We blinked — once, then twice — and suddenly we’re here. Halfway through 2025.

What happened to the time we begged to slow down?

Maybe... nothing happened.

Maybe we just grew up too fast.