Twenties...the time of our lives?

I have very recently turned 21 and have been cruely flung into the real world like a piece of unwanted carrot off a childs plate. Maybe i have been wearing rose tinted glasses the entirity of my young life but i thought that now was when all my hopes and dreams were meant to be coming together? Instead i have found myself swimming the mirky waters of lonliness, helplessness, and worst of all....jobseekers allowance (which, and this is going to make me sound terribly naive and snobby, i thought was only designed for the lazy or the old). I am really not looking forward to dragging myself to my nearest jobcentre and standing inside it's bleak walls begging for someone to fix my life for me.

For the past 20 years i feel like i've been coccooned in a soft and cuddly world and have only just found out the truth, that the world is in fact harsh, rocky and jagged...a place where no one seems to happily exist. I'm not the only one who is thinking this either. The few friends that i talk to regularly, all of the same age and all recently graduated, seem to have been marooned on the same island as me and are wondering when the boat to safety is going to come.
Isn't your 20's a year for travel, excitement, lust, love, gorgeous flats, and romantic weddings...or is all that the fairy tale of the 21st century now? I find it sad that i'm beginning to wonder all this, especially when i do have a wonderful love in my life...but as the 21st century seems to go, he is 8 and a half hours away from me and also in the same desperate situation.

Right now i don't have an answer to any of this. I feel totally and utterly lost and bewildered as to what to do and what path to take. We are meant to be the future of this country...but how can we be when this country seems to be falling apart around us?




Me and the BF at our graduation...before the dream ended!