You were always on a path dictated by someone else. You all were. 

You and your friends were set upon the same path by the random occurrence of your mothers giving birth at the same time. You all started along the path together, continued it from kindergarten to the 12th grade. Then you went to college. It was the first choice you really made for yourself, but it wasn’t much of one. It was something that you knew you were going to do, an expectation. Your entire life’s goals were wrapped up in graduating from it. It’s the only thing you’ve ever set your sights on. 

Now, four years later, you’re standing at graduation, the smoke of fireworks lingering in the sky, the chatter of excited people around you. You made it. You were all eagerly waiting for graduation day, yearning for the day when you would be set free from the confines of college, not realizing that those constraints were the things that kept you close. Not realizing that the days of lounging in the library, eating a subpar meal in the diner three times a day, and drunken adventures that hung over into the next morning would start to become part of the past. You all fill your last summer with lounging at the beach, late nights, parties, and trips. It’s a summer you don’t want to end, but it’s August. It has to end.

It’s time for your first adult decision. You gather again, you and your friends, and hand in hand stare down the path to true adulthood. Now, you, for the first time, have no one telling you where to go or what’s next. The future is an accumulation of the choices that you make, not that someone else dictates for you. You will make a choice that will lead you to somewhere you are unsure of. The future really is unwritten. You have to choose. So here you go. You can…

1. Decide that summer doesn’t have to end. You don’t need a job; adventure will sustain you. Maybe you can even become an influencer.
2. Learn more. Learning is a lifelong commitment; grad school is right around the corner. Law school even, who knows?
3. Get a soul-draining corporate job in a new city.
4. Go teach English in another country. You’ll get paid dollars a day but get the chance to explore. 

You stare incredulously at all the paths, shocked at all the decisions that people are making and how priorities are changing. Your friend from your internship decides to keep the summer going. Your best friend growing up is going to an Ivy League for grad school, and your frat friends are going to teach English in faraway places. 

You knew which one you were going to do without much consideration. There has always been a vision. Graduate and get a job. It didn’t matter what job. You didn’t think that far when conceptualizing the plan. Just a job that paid something. Hopefully something high, but you wouldn’t be too picky yet. It’s safe, steady, expected. An illusion of choice. Such a mundane decision that we probably shouldn’t even be calling this choosing your own adventure at all. But it’s a choice nonetheless, and at least it will take you to a new city. 

Two of your friends get jobs in the same city. You move in together. Some things feel the same as they did in college. You still spend your weekends doing too many shots and dancing. You still debrief over pancakes and giant waffles in the morning; now they’re just a bit more expensive. Instead of homework, your evenings are full of mandatory happy hours. The three of you mark the city with memories. Sometimes you call your friends whose paths have diverged from yours, content to catch up instead of creating experiences with one another. 

One weekend night, as usual, you are all at a bar. An attractive group of people around your age approaches your group. They’re cute, funny, they buy you drinks, and they flirt shamelessly. Everyone seamlessly falls into partners. You go from one bar to the next with them, but the sun is about to come up, and a choice needs to be made. Do you… 

1. Give the cutie your number to follow up another time.
2. Go home with them. The night is young, the vibes are good; you’ll see where things go.
3. Slip out of the bar without saying bye to anyone, including your friends.
4. Thank them for the night and keep it moving. There will be more cute strangers in the future. 

You’re busy adjusting to work and getting a handle on the new city. It’s a shock going into the real world, and you still need time to find yourself, you reason as you choose D. Plus, who needs a partner when you and your friends have Instagram DMs full of things to do and a long list of goals? One of your friends agrees. The other decides B and sees where the night will take them. 

Your choice, D, led you to a promotion in name only. No more money, just more work and empty promises of a raise. Your choice means that you run three times a week now and are maybe going to do a half marathon soon. Apparently that is the approved activities choice for singles in their twenties. 

It turns out that your friend’s night will lead them to love. They spend their weekend with this new person, who is apparently “their person.” That’s confusing — you had always been “their person.” Their go-to for a night out or in. Their first choice. You’re second now. Sometimes even third. You seem to keep falling in the rankings. You miss your friend. 

Your three-bedroom apartment is quieter now. The third room is basically a shrine to your friend, as they spend almost every night at their partner’s. They poke their head in to tell you that your lease is almost up and they’re choosing to go home with the person from the bar forever. They’re starting a life together. You think of the life you were supposed to live together. It wasn’t a life held together by rings or a legal contract, but it was still a full life. You still had joint dreams. You briefly mourn that life and the friendship you once had. With them moving out and your lease up, you and your other roommate are faced with another decision to make. Will you…

1. Live alone. 
2. Find a new roommate. 
3. Find an apartment for two. 
4. Leave the city and move back home.

You’re not going home. You toy with the idea. The move to the city has been hard; you’ve been barely above broke for most of it, but you’re still having fun. You’re still proud that you’ve tried somewhere new. Your friends are so spread out now that going home may as well be starting over again, too. You consider your other options. 

Who can live alone in this economy? You think as you go on Facebook and start looking at new listings for roommates or apartments. You haven’t decided which one yet. Your other roommate knocks on your door as you scroll. 

Apparently they can live alone. They just got a real promotion at work. They try to tell you that nothing will change, that you’ll still be close even if it’s not across-the-hall close. You try to keep the anxious feeling of being abandoned from welling in your chest. Everyone is dropping off the path that you were always on together. Adulthood is becoming a solitary undertaking, a process of figuring things out on your own. You can’t live alone in this economy. You’ll be looking for a roommate and an apartment. The choice has been made for you.

Your new roommate is nice and respectful. You fill each other in on your days, laugh, and even eat together sometimes, but they don’t fill the void of your friends. The friends who were on the same path as you. The friends who love the current you but have also had the chance to love the different versions of you that have made you the person you are now. Friends who have seen you both flounder and blossom. 

You see their lives expanding without you. In getting farther from you, the people you love are getting closer to their purposes and dreams. You see them falling in love, creating new lives, traveling the world, teaching future generations, moving up corporate ladders, creating art. You thought you’d be by their sides when it happened. You miss them, but you are in awe of them. You are proud of them. You all do your best to stay close together. To make your dreams come together in a way that is vaguely, misshapenly connected. Just because you diverge doesn’t mean that you stop supporting one another. You call, text, and DM; plan trips; and send celebratory flowers and cakes. You will be there no matter how far away they get. 

Things will never be the same, you realize. So, you have to make another choice…

1. Yearn for the lives you could’ve lived.
2. Choose your own adventure.