I AM 20
BY DELANEY LUNDQUIST
WHEN YOU ARE 20, IT SOUNDS OLD BUT DOESN’T FEEL LIKE IT AT ALL. You do things that make you seem like a fully capable adult, like paying electricity bills for your apartment and being a full-time intern at an actual office and cooking your own dinner every single night. But you are also still young enough that your family sends you care packages of cookies because this is your first time living alone. And though you have 20 years of life experience, it isn’t enough to make you stop eating those cookies even when you are full. This is how I came to find myself lying with my face pressed to the cool tiles of my bathroom floor thinking I was going to puke. It was because I ate an ungodly amount of cookies, while standing alone in the kitchen of my apartment, from a package my sister sent me, before I had even been home long enough to take off my work shoes. I had a lot of time languishing dramatically on the bathroom floor to really reflect upon my behavior.
8 COOKIES 15 MINUTES
I was sweating and breathing heavily with my face inches from the vent in the floor to absorb the pitiful amounts of air-condition being emitted. While mentally preparing myself to ralph, I could only think, “I cannot believe that in two full decades of life I haven’t learned when I have eaten too many cookies.” It was a very sad realization; an actual low moment as a I lay curled near the toilet clad in my entire “young professional” ensemble. There are few things more pathetic than lying on the floor of your bathroom realizing you are going to literally toss your cookies. And that is kind of what it is like being 20, you are either pretending you are an independent adult or doing things characteristic of most two-year-olds because you just aren’t sure you can be on your most responsible behavior all the time. In my case, that thing was eating 8 cookies in 15 minutes. And throwing up 8 cookies, 15 minutes later.
This is a basically true retelling of events that happened to Delaney Lundquist in the summer of 2012. A little dramatic exaggeration for the sake of the story never hurt anyone. Delaney is a junior Communication Design student at Washington University in St. Louis and created this spread for Digital Adventure in the fall of 2012.