22 & Struggling (is it just me??)

Even if you have not been 22 with an abusive ex-boyfriend, broke, homesick, and friendless in a new city, you have, at one point or another, felt like today’s texter – certain that you are alone and forever lost in uncontrollable chaos. Nora’s here to remind you that we are not the worst thing that happened to us. We are not our mistakes. We are infinite and expansive. And there is always hope for tomorrow.

Transcripts may not appear in their final version and are subject to change.

---

Hi guys, it’s Nora McInerny, and this is Thanks For Asking, a call in show about what matters to you.

I take your calls, I take your texts, I take your voicemails, I take your emails, and we talk about it.

I got this text two days ago.

I was waiting for my kid to come out of school.

I was early, and it’s worth noting because I’m not always early.

I’m often, you know, I’m often running a little behind other people’s schedule, but spiritually, I am right on time.

I got this text message.

It’s a three scroll text.

So it’s a lengthy one.

And I saw the first sentence and I said, I’m going to dedicate myself to reading this text message immediately.

I replied within, I would say, two minutes just to say, well, what you’re going to hear some of what I said.

But it hit something in me because I have been in this age, I have been this girl, and I’m sure that many of you have been too.

And if we could, if it was possible to do time travel, I would say, no, thank you.

You cannot send me back unless, huge asterisk, I am able to take this brain with me.

All this experience, all this knowledge, all this self-development.

If I can take this 40-something-year-old brain with me, sure, I’ll go back to middle school, I’ll go back to high school, I’ll go back to my 20s, my 30s.

If I can take this brain with me, otherwise, no, no, no, not enough money in the world.

Because a lot of things change.

In the world, some things just don’t.

You’re gonna know what I mean in a few minutes.

Let’s just get into it, okay.

So a disclaimer before I get into this, I respond to your emails, I respond to everything.

You know, and if you didn’t know, you should know, I’m not a therapist, I’m not a mental health professional, I’m a woman with a microphone, I’m a woman with opinions, I’m a woman with a lot of biases.

And I am, and probably always will be, biased towards the person who reached out to me.

I sometimes try to add a little bit of nuance, I sometimes try to see something from another person’s perspective, but if you listen to this show, when you reach out to me, I’m probably just going to be on your side, okay.

I’m gonna be on your side.

So let’s get into it.

Hi, Nora.

Love the pod and love your existence.

I almost didn’t read that and I said, you know what, let’s be truthful.

She said this and I accept.

Thank you.

I’m not sure if this is worthy of the pod, but here goes.

Stop saying that when you text me, everybody.

Stop saying, I don’t know if this is good enough.

I’ll judge it, okay.

I’ll judge it.

You don’t need to judge it.

Don’t try to like put me off of it immediately.

Don’t say like, look, I know this isn’t any good.

Don’t do that, okay.

I’m a 22-year-old gal, and that’s where I said, I got to read this now.

I’m a 22-year-old gal living in a new city with no friends, an unfulfilling job, and far from home.

In January, I moved from Iowa, all caps.

I believe that Iowa should always be completely capitalized.

I think that is a form of respect that we show to the state of Iowa, to Denver, to live with my now ex-boyfriend.

He was a terrible person in many ways, including the time he flirted with another woman during our relationship, had a sleepover with her, is that what we’re calling it now, and then kicked me out after that happened.

I found a new apartment in April, so moved there in January, this happens in April, for which I had to pay a deposit and rent on the same day, which has left me with approximately no money.

I don’t know how people are able to launch in this day and age.

Rent is so expensive, coming up with, we used to have to come up with first, last, and deposit, like, all at once.

Okay, so doing this, this is no small feat, as a 22-year-old in one of the most expensive cities in America in the year 2025 or even in 2005.

Like, this is hard stuff, so congratulations.

Very impressive that you were even able to do that at age 22 because I would have needed to tap my parents to do that.

So he kicks you out.

He kicks you out.

And he’s, I’m assuming, able to do that because your name is not on the lease and now you are out on your own.

I’ve been in Denver for seven months now and I feel like I’m in the same place I was back in in January.

I’m struggling to make friends, to feel like I belong here, and I’m just really homesick.

All my friends are still in school and in Iowa, so I feel left out and alone.

I bet you do.

Seven months in a new place, you move there to be with a boyfriend.

You move there to be with a boyfriend, he pretty immediately dumps you.

February, March, April, three months in, he’s already had a sleepover, okay, with another girl, doesn’t sound like a very, very nice person.

And you uprooted your life for him.

You uprooted your life for him.

That would be hard to recover from.

You’re moving to his city where he knows people, and the only person you know is him.

I’m also struggling with processing the relationship.

He was really manipulative and mean, and basically picked at or made fun of every single part of me.

Cool.

Cool.

Great.

The ex was insecure about my best friend of four years because we had dated for six months in high school.

So the ex said I could not be his friend anymore.

And for some reason, I listened.

So I’m really missing my friend too, but I burned that bridge, and I understand it can’t be built back up easily, especially being states away.

So I just, I hate this guy.

Anybody who picks at you makes you feel bad about yourself, run, leave.

That is not love, okay?

You don’t need to have read the Bible to know that love is patient, love is kind.

Love does not pick you apart.

Love does not say that you cannot be friends with your best friend of several years because you dated in high school.

Like grow up, I understand that you’re 22.

High school is kind of recent, but also like what?

If you wanted that person to be your boyfriend, trust me, they would be your boyfriend.

I cannot handle insecurity in men.

I think it’s so unappealing and when it leads to being controlling, absolutely not, absolutely not.

And it’s also very relatable to want to be loved even falsely, even badly, even unkindly, so much that you would betray yourself, betray what you know to be okay, what you know to be right, what you care about, your best friend, in order to maintain a relationship with a person who does not want the best things for you, but wants to control you, and wants you to essentially be somebody else.

And you’re right, a friendship cannot be built up right away, but I think that you would be surprised at how far a phone call can go.

I know Gen Z doesn’t love a phone call.

Pick up the phone, make a call, send a voice memo first, maybe, if you’re a little nervous, and just say, hey, I’m gonna call you.

You don’t have to pick up, but there’s just some things that I want you to hear in my own voice, right?

And say, I’m really sorry.

I’m really sorry this was the situation, this is why I did that, I know it was wrong.

I knew it was wrong when I did it, and I’m sorry, I bet that hurt you a lot.

And if you would have me back, I’d miss our friendship, and I could really use it right now, and I would love to be a friend to you too.

So putting that out there, try.

You have to try, especially when you are lonely, especially when you are isolated, and you are isolated, you’ve been isolated physically and emotionally.

You were with a person who wanted you to cut off relationships that had sustained you and created you.

Somebody who loves you is not going to say, oh, that person’s your best friend, they love you.

You can no longer be friends with them.

And I will say, as somebody who has had a guy best friend since college, shout out Dave, any person who has truly, truly loved me has loved Dave, has never once had a problem with Dave’s existence, like our relationship and the people who did have a problem with it, were losers that I was never going to be with.

Like not, not for real.

Like if you are so jealous of your girlfriend having a friend because he’s a boy, like honestly, just get a grip, God.

It’s been really hard to reflect on decisions and mistakes I made while with the X and on top of processing my own behaviors, I am still without real community and without a real purpose.

Okay.

You are not without a real purpose.

You’re not without a real purpose.

And I know that the pressure to have a capital P purpose is big.

It is big at every sort of form, at every stage of our lives.

But I think, in my experience, it felt very, very heavy when I was younger, right?

Like, I gotta have a purpose, I gotta have something I’m going towards.

Like, it is okay to exist.

It is okay to take the time to process what has happened to you.

It is okay to take some time to lick your wounds.

I had a conversation with a young person who is in my life, who said something so wise that I wrote it down.

I think I wrote an entire, like, Substack newsletter about it, which is, they said, Oh, I used to think that the point of this year was to get to, you know, a specific place, to achieve a specific goal, and now my goal for this year is to have a regulated nervous system.

That is not a sentence that I would have been able to speak at that age.

I did not know really nervous system.

I just thought, well, that must be why I have so much anxiety.

Like, the system is doing what it was designed to do.

I am constantly nervous.

I guess it’s functioning just fine.

But if you have lived in turbulence and unsteadiness, like you plucked yourself or were plucked, however you want to think about it, out of what you knew, out of the world that you knew, the community you knew, went somewhere, took the risk, took on the risk, by the way, for a relationship and it didn’t work out.

Of course, you’re isolated.

Your big purpose right now does not need to be, oh, you find deeply fulfilling work and you have giant goals that you’re working towards.

That is a weird lie, a weird amount of pressure that the internet has put on you.

I felt that at age 22 when the internet was like, you could easily reach the end of it.

I was like, well, I’ve read every blog.

I felt that way when the only window I had into the lives of my former classmates were like very, very blurry pictures on Facebook and it just was not what it is today.

I did not have lifestyle influencers telling me that they were spending the day getting $14 matcha lattes and then going to $60 Pilates classes.

I was simply 22 living also in a city where I did not know people, did not have a community.

The first year that I spent in New York City, I did live with a boyfriend and it was very tumultuous.

It was very tumultuous and I did not work with anybody my age.

I did not have any friends.

I remember going to get a manicure and a pedicure, and just seeing groups of friends, like a mother and a daughter, and wanting to lean over and just be like, can I go, where do you guys do enough for this?

Can I come?

Can I come?

And it was not easy.

It was not easy to build that community.

And I did it awkwardly.

You know what I mean?

I did it awkwardly.

When I met someone, I would seriously be like, do you want to be friends?

Like, the answer was not always yes.

The answer was not always yes, but I will always remember, I met these girls at a party through my then boyfriend and they’re ripping cigs out on a fire escape.

And they’re like, oh God, we don’t like your boyfriend.

We like you.

Do you want to come hang out tomorrow?

And I was like, yeah, I do, I do, I do, I do.

Woke up, was like, did they really mean it?

Opened my flip phone, said, okay.

Like they sent me their address.

I looked it up on MapQuest.

I was like, hopefully, you remember how to get there.

I went there.

We got like a bagel.

We walked around.

We went like thrift shopping.

And I just thought like, oh my God, I think I have friends.

I think I have friends.

I think I have friends.

And like, and then I did, right?

And then I did.

I’m not saying that it’s going to be easy.

I’m not going to say that you like pull yourself out of loneliness easily.

I mean, it’s a crisis.

It’s a pandemic or an epidemic or it’s a demic for sure that people experience.

And also, it is kind of like a natural byproduct of when you take a big swing, when you make a very, very big move.

So, find something that you like.

This is something that I’m giving as unsolicited advice.

Find something that you like, anything.

Do you like animals?

Go volunteer at the Humane Society, at the animal shelter.

Go do something that gets you out of your apartment, out of your head, something that doesn’t cost money.

And show up, show up.

Meet somebody, talk to somebody, get their Instagram.

I guess my daughter said now people just ask for each other’s Instagram instead of their phone number, whatever.

Okay, do that, do that.

Just like go out and just try, just try.

Any invitation that you get, say yes.

Just say yes, just say yes.

Just say yes, get out of your house, get out of your apartment, get out of your head.

Okay.

But you don’t have to have a purpose.

Your purpose right now, your purpose right now can simply be getting yourself to a nice homeostasis.

Your purpose right now can be, I want to feel good about myself.

I want to shake off what happened to me.

And I want to get myself in a position where I can recognize something good the next time it crosses my path.

I want to believe that I am worthy of good things and I want them to find me and I want to go find them.

Like that is enough of a purpose.

Your purpose does not need to be something huge and lofty.

Basically, I’m 22, broke, have no friends in the state, and I’m just seeking out advice or maybe affirmation that I am not alone in this type of situation.

Babe, you are not alone.

Every time that you think that you are the only person experiencing something, I want you to close your eyes.

I want you to imagine all the 22-year-old girls who have come before you, all of us were lost.

When Taylor Swift wrote, I don’t know about you, but I’m feeling 22.

I mean, she said we’re lonely, lost, confused.

We’re ba-da-da-da-da-da in the same.

We’re da-da-da-da-da-da in the same way.

We’re miserable and magical.

Oh.

She said we’re miserable.

It’s miserable and magical, right?

And she was right.

It is that song.

I don’t know about you, but I’m feeling 42.

Okay?

I’m 20 years older than you.

When I was 22, you were a toddler.

And guess what I was probably doing?

I was babysitting people your age.

When I was 22, I had a degree.

I had a job.

I did not make enough money to support myself, and so I babysat at night.

And…

I got to look up these lyrics.

We’re happy, free, confused, and lonely at the same time.

That’s you at 22.

That’s me sometimes at 42.

You are a person having a totally normal human experience.

It’s a normal reaction to everything that has happened to you, being with somebody who is unkind to you, moving to a new city where you didn’t know anyone, having the plans that you made fall apart.

And I want you to think about something else, which is you got yourself out of that situation, okay?

You lost your housing, lost a relationship, and what did you do?

You went and got yourself an apartment.

You put the money down for deposit, you put that first month’s rent down, you did that.

You did that at 22 years old, you did that.

So your friends are, you know, back in Iowa, so your friends are in school, so your friends are whatever.

Everybody is on their own path, their own journey.

I am 42, you are 22.

I still have a sign above my desk that says, eyes on your own paper, eyes on your own paper.

Because if you spend your entire life, or even, you know, 10 minutes a day, just like looking around at how other people are doing it and thinking, oh, God, maybe I should have done it that way.

Oh, it looks like she’s actually doing a better job.

You’ll drive yourself crazy.

And you won’t go anywhere.

You won’t do anything.

You won’t make any progress if you are constantly trying to jump onto other people’s life pads or compare yourself.

They say compare and despair and they are correct.

They are correct.

So before you judge yourself, I want you to celebrate yourself.

I want you to celebrate the fact that you are 22 years old and you’re living on your own.

It’s hard to do.

It’s almost impossible to do for many people out there, and you are doing it.

That’s incredible.

And someday, you will be 42 years old, God willing, okay?

Someday you will be 42 years old.

It will be hard for you to remember this guy’s name.

You will say, God, when I was 22, I was, what’s his name?

What’s his name?

You’ll remember he’s a jerk, right?

You’ll never really forget that.

You’ll forget some of the details.

You’ll forget a lot of the details.

He will be a footnote in your str-

not even a footnote.

He will be a line you erased and wrote over.

He should not have the power to define what this age means for you, what this city means for you, what your life means for you.

He is something that happened, but he’s not the whole story.

Don’t let him be the whole story.

He took what he took from you.

He took your time.

He took a friendship.

He took your confidence.

Don’t give him anymore.

Don’t give him anymore.

And I know you’re going to see a therapist because you’re a smart girl.

I know you’re going to take care of yourself.

And that is me telling you to do that.

If you haven’t, while also knowing, hmm, certainly not the most accessible.

Form of health care, is it?

It’s a rant for another time and a rant I’ve made many other times that I will continue to make.

But I say this will call out to everybody.

If you are 22 to 25, I think that’s a good age range to be friends.

22 to 26, I don’t know, like what’s okay to be friends with now.

If you are in your early 20s and you are in Denver, and you are lonely, and you feel like you’re a loser, will you tap in?

Will you tap in?

Can we make some friends through this show?

Could we do that?

Could we go get this girl out of her apartment and get her doing something?

Okay, what do you like to do?

Do you like to hike?

People in Denver all like to hike, so I already know you do.

Like, do you want to be like, go do something.

Just go do something, try to meet people, take a swing, take a miss.

Like, what’s the worst that could happen?

Like someone just never texts you back, and guess what?

Big deal, there’s plenty of friends in the sea.

Okay.

I really do appreciate you listening.

I promise I’m not a sad, boring, lonely person all the time, but Denver is really bringing it out of me.

You are not a sad, boring, lonely person any of the time.

You might be lonely, but you’re not sad and boring.

You might be sad, but you’re not boring.

You’re never boring, okay?

You’re not a boring person, I promise you.

You are not.

But I’ll tell you right now, listeners, the first text that I sent, all I wrote was, I hate this idiot.

Was that a productive text to send?

I do think so.

Do I stand by it?

Yeah.

Because, look, relationships, human relationships are hard, they are complicated.

Romantic relationships are difficult.

And I think the worst thing is, like, we just go out in the world and we learn on each other.

We learn on each other.

We’re 16, we’re 18, we’re 22, and we don’t know ourselves well enough yet.

Maybe we didn’t have great models for a relationship, or maybe we did, but we still don’t know what to do when we are in these situations.

And we do treat each other unkindly.

We do make huge mistakes.

But I more often see women at 22, I think you’re a zygote, I think you’re a girl, I think you’re a baby, I want to put you in a baby bjorn and carry you around.

I mostly see girls carrying around the things that men have done to them, the ways that men have treated them.

And yeah, that’s a sweeping generalization.

Get me a broom, baby, because that’s what I do.

I am painting with the widest brush.

It’s one of those giant industrial rollers, but I hate to see that.

I hate to see a girl moving through this world as though the way that somebody treated her was her fault.

Okay, because the subtext of this text to me is, is there something wrong with me, right?

Am I the only one who’s in this situation?

No, no, no, no, no.

Again, close your eyes and imagine the women who have come before you, all of us have a story like this.

All of us gave our time, our love, our bodies, our attention to somebody who didn’t like us, who didn’t like us, and this guy did not like you.

He didn’t like you.

He wanted you to be there.

He wanted you around physically, but somebody who likes you doesn’t treat you that way.

We all have been through something like this, and if you haven’t, you are one of the very lucky few who looked for love, found it on the first try, and for that, I am so happy for you, truly.

It happens.

It happens.

It happens, but the vast majority of us know this feeling.

We know what it is like to say, like, oh yeah, I’m gonna go uproot my life for this person who says they really want me there, and you know, oh God, like life is so exciting.

Life can still be so exciting.

I promise you, 22, you are so young.

Like, there’s always next year.

There’s always tomorrow.

There’s always tomorrow.

You have until April when your lease is up.

I have to count on my fingers.

You have eight months.

You have eight months until your lease is up.

Do not, do not spend these eight months salting your own wounds.

Use these eight months to build yourself up.

Use these eight months to tell yourself a different story about where you are, about who you are, about what this age means to you.

Tomorrow can be better.

Today can be better.

Twenty-three might be your year.

Maybe it’s not, maybe it’s twenty-four, maybe it’s twenty-five, maybe it’s twenty-seven, maybe it’s forty-seven, you don’t know.

I promise you, there is always more.

There is always more for you out there.

I am thrilled to know that there is, there are Gen Zs listening to this podcast.

I really, I don’t spend too much time imagining listeners, other than the five, possibly six, straight men who listen to the show.

And otherwise, I just believe they’re all literally my age, I don’t know.

I don’t know why.

I don’t have a, maybe I don’t have a great imagination.

I always tell people I do, but maybe I don’t.

I am glad you’re here.

And yeah, this question was worthy of the pod.

It was worthy of the pod.

And I wish so badly that I could take you on a Charles Dickens tour to your future, okay?

I wish I could show up as like the ghost of Christmas future and show you a world in one year, five years, 10 years, 12 years that you cannot even envision right now because you are so in it.

And by in it, I mean just like the misery of being in your early twenties.

And I don’t always love when people say like, Oh God, you got to shift your perspective like, or Oh, it just takes perspective like, as though the only way to see something is to step back from it.

Like you are right here, okay?

This is a perspective.

It’s not the most expansive perspective, but like that’s where you are.

It’s all very close, okay?

I’m recording this in August.

You moved out in April.

Again, counting on my fingers, May, June, July.

So you’re four months out.

I don’t know how long this relationship was, but it was probably longer than four months, probably had some intensity to it.

But if you were willing to uproot your life, and I wanna go back to one thing, which is you mentioned like, oh, your friends are still in school and you’re not.

I don’t know if you graduated.

I don’t know if you left school temporarily.

School’s gonna be there.

School’s gonna be there.

And no one will care if you graduated when you were 23, 25, 27, nobody cares.

Nobody cares.

Nobody cares.

The timelines that we think we are beholden to, they are all made up.

They are all made up.

And if we feel that kind of pressure, because that’s the timeline that other people are on or the timeline we thought we were supposed to be on, you’ve got to remember everybody’s life is different.

Your life is going to change.

And so maybe you were on.

You were on that trajectory.

You were on that timeline to graduate at 22.

You’re from the Midwest, married at 25, mom by 26.

Maybe that even sounds late to you.

I promise it’s not.

I promise it’s not.

You switch timelines.

But you know what?

Someday you’re going to be 42, and you’ll be telling your kids, your nieces, whoever, you’ll be like, oh God.

Yeah, when I was 22, I moved to Denver to live with the biggest loser you’ve ever met, okay?

And your story will become an instruction manual for another young woman.

And you won’t say, oh, don’t move there for him.

Oh God, oh God.

But you’ll say, make sure your name’s on Elise.

Make sure you have a backup plan.

You will say that, and you will be wise to say that.

But you tried something.

Girl, you took a leap.

You’ll never have to wonder what would have happened because you found out.

And that is what life is about, is about trying things and finding out.

And you found out you have more information now than you did in January.

You know this guy sucks.

Maybe you always knew it, but now you do not have to wonder at all.

He sucks.

He sucks.

He sucks.

And you don’t.

You don’t.

We are not the worst thing that happened to us.

We are not our mistakes.

Okay?

We are infinite and expansive.

And I just promise you, there is more.

So I hope you hear this.

I’m going to text it to you so you don’t miss it.

And I hope tomorrow gets better.

I hope your year gets better.

We are going to keep checking in with you because we got to know.

And this is a call to the women and men, I guess, whoever, right?

These, whatever.

This is a call to people who are no longer 22.

I want you in the comments on this Substack, okay?

That’s where we post the ad free episodes.

That’s where the comments happen.

I want you in there.

I want you in there.

I need you to share your wisdom for this girl.

Is she the only 22-year-old who feels like lost and alone and like they don’t have a purpose?

I doubt it, okay?

Let’s, let’s, let’s rally.

Let us raise this 22-year-old girl together, all right?

And if you have anything, if you want to call in, you want to email, you know the phone number at 612-568-4441.

The email is thanks at feelingsand.co.

And we will be back again next week.

Thank you so much.

Thanks to Marcel Malekebu for producing this episode, Grace Berry for producing our video content and prepping episodes and doing so much for us.

And thank you to everybody who has listened to and shared this podcast.

It’s an independent production and you know, that’s a, we do it together.

It’s a group project.

Our theme music is by Geoffrey Lamar Wilson.

His album is linked in our show description on Apple and Spotify.

The closing theme music that you are hearing right now is by my young son, Q, a second grader.

He loves making theme music.

I did have to pay him to license this.

And this episode was brought to you by our sponsors and also brought to you by our supporting producers who are people who have subscribed over on the Substack, noraborialis.substack.com.

People who, you can join it the monthly, you can join it the annual, or like a supporting producer, you can kick in a little bit more and get your name in the credits, okay?

So big thanks to Nancy Duff, Jenny Medellin, Jordan Jones, Sheila, Kathleen Langerman, Ben, Jess, Michelle Toms, Tom Stockburger, Jen, Beth Derry, Stacy Demouro, Emily Ferriso, Stephanie Johnson, Faye Behrens, Amanda, Sarah Garifo, Jennifer McDagle in all caps, Elia Feliz-Milan, Lindsay Lund, Renee Kepke, Chelsea Cernick, Car Pan, LGS all caps, Stacey Wilson, Courtney McCown, Kaylee Sakai, Mary Beth Berry, Jothia Disopolis, Mad, Abbi Arose, Elizabeth Berkley, Kim F.

Melody Swinford, Val, Lauren Hanna, Katie, Jessica Letexier, Crystal Mann, Lisa Piven, Kate Lyon, Christina, Sarah David, Kate Byerjohn, Aaron John, Joy Pollock, Crystal, Jennifer Pavelka, Jess Blackwell, Micah, Jessica Reed, Beth Lippem, Kiara, Jill McDonald, Jen Grimlin, Alexis Lane, David Binkley, Kathy Hamm, Virginia Labassi, Lizzie DeVries, Jeremy Essin, Anne DeBrasinski, Robin Roulard, Nicole Petey, Monica, my best friend Caroline Moss, Rachel Walton, Inga, Bonnie Robinson, Shannon Dominguez-Stevens, Penny Pesta, Kaylee Dave Gilmore, that best friend I was telling you about, okay, he’s still here, and Jacqueline Ryder.

Thank you, everybody.

We’ll be back again next week.

I think I already said that, but now you know again.