confessions of (and conversations with) a 20’s paradox
Sometimes I’m the worst person in the world. Sometimes I’m the best. Really, I think I’m just A Person. What does that mean, if anything? Is it okay to just be A Person?
Welcome to our confessions! We are two young people who went from instagram friends to penpals because we craved an outlet to make sense of our lives in an overdramatic, traditional, delicate-hand-to-distressed-forehead fashion. And then Soph accidentally made this publication whilst navigating substack too hard (I feel like a grandma trying to ‘Use The Facebook’), decided to fuck it and run with it, and immediately thought of Maheen.
Everything is confusing, and being alive is hard, and we are here to explore why, and what the fuck is going on.
Who’s calling please??
Hi! I’m soph (or sophie, if you’re mad at me). I’m 21, I’m law school drop-out, and now I work full time in property (not as swanky as it sounds, I just want to sound accomplished). As does any 20-something girl, I write about personal experiences, about poetry, about philosophy, about everything, to explore what I don’t understand. Sometimes by the end, it makes a bit more sense. Maybe I’ll post a diary entry or two if I think it deserves to be freed. It’s 2025 - do we have a thought if it isn’t broadcasted?
People have been sorry for me for most of my life, which makes me want to vomit. I’ve met a lot of horrible people (and dated some for good measure), but I’ve met a lot of beautiful ones too. I was a child of the hospitals, I used to be in a wheelchair, and I am a girl with a Mother. If you ask me what my favourite song is I will not have an answer for you. If you ask me what my favourite book is I’ll tell you whichever one I just read (or Sharp Objects, or Clytemnestra, or Lessons in Chemistry). I mostly want to die and I mostly hate the way everything works and I like to explore why I shouldn’t when I write. I have a suspicion it might just be because I’m in my 20s. I want to comfort people with whatever I write, because, whatever either of us is feeling is totally normal and totally okay, I just have to prove it somehow. Unless you’re dead, you still have time.
Hello very much! I am Maheen. I am a 22 year old computer science student, and I dream of everything but computer science. I write about love, loneliness, and lostness. I am also a self-proclaimed poet, I might post a few poems I deem worthy, or I might not. We’ll see how it goes. I often feel like life is a jigsaw puzzle, the picture is a vast city of concrete towers, a ground flooded with tarmac and bright lights and I am a puzzle piece with a bright green tree painted upon it. All my life I’ve chased the answer to “What does it feel like to belong?”, and at my very old age of 22, I’m realizing that is a lifelong chase. The bones in my legs will turn to dust long before that path ever shows an end.
When Soph asked me to join her on this very exciting yet very scary venture, I was, as you may have guessed, very excited yet very scared. My writing is me at my very core, it’s me at my most vulnerable. I try to make sense of everything that happens to me via writing about it. The ink on my pages has always been squeezed out of my feelings and experiences. Soph and I are similar in that I also mostly want to die and hate the way everything works. I suppose that’s why we make such stellar penpals. I’m going to write to figure it out, and maybe my words will begin to mean something to someone else along the way too.
About you… us… hey babe, what are we?
I do not know how any of this works. I might be doing this wrong possibly. But it’s okay! This isn’t about me (it is), it’s about everything. Maybe one day it’ll be a community of people being okay with having absolutely no idea if any of this is right - maybe that’s now! This should be about all of us! Until then, it is about me though. XOXO
