The New Punk Rock Is Becoming Known (Again)

On post-college shifts, silent rooms, and relearning the rules of being seen.

I stumbled across a reel the other day that said your twenties are the hardest time in a person’s life. I paused on it longer than I usually would, not because I agreed right away, but because I wasn’t sure what to make of it.

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Lately, I have been thinking about what it really means to grow up. Everyone says you change when you leave a place, that you grow, evolve, become more of yourself. But no one quite tells you what that looks like when it’s happening. It doesn’t feel like a transformation. It feels like standing in a familiar room that’s slowly losing its colour, watching moments you once lived in drift just far enough away that you’re no longer sure how to reach them. Three months ago, I was in college. I spent three years there, in classrooms and corridors, in rehearsals and rallies, surrounded by people who knew not just my name but my ways. The strange thing about leaving college is how quickly something that shaped you starts to feel like a memory.

All my life, I have been surrounded by people my age. That’s the quiet luxury of school and college, a built-in community of peers who understand your references without explanation. You don’t have to catch people up on your life before making a joke or sharing an opinion. There’s a collective rhythm. It gives you a sense of belonging without effort.

But now, I find myself in rooms where the people around me have been out of college almost as long as I have been alive. People who don’t flinch when they say things like “ten years ago,” because it actually was ten years ago. The gap isn’t just in age, but in rhythm. In pace. In perspective. It’s not that they are unkind. On the contrary, they’re generous, accomplished, even warm. But they don’t know me. Not really. And I haven’t figured out yet how to be known in this new setting.

I am almost 21, technically an adult, but I often feel younger than I ever have. Not in the romantic, youthful sense of adventure, but in the disoriented sense of not knowing how this new phase works, the awkward kid at the table of adults. Of being the only one in the room who doesn’t get the inside jokes. Or figure out how to ask questions without sounding too lost.

And in the quiet moments, after work, on weekends, in between group chats that have gone silent, I notice the distance. Not just physical, but emotional. The kind of distance that creeps in when lives begin to unfold in different directions. When you are not part of the daily details anymore. You still love your people. They love you back. But there’s a difference between loving someone and living beside them.

No one tells you that once you get the freedom you craved, the independence you spent years waiting for, you will also inherit the silence that comes with it. The stillness of having to seek out connection rather than stumbling into it. Of needing to make plans instead of just showing up. Of realising that effort is no longer optional, it’s the currency of adult relationships.

This isn’t about loneliness, at least not in the conventional sense. I have people I can call. People I care about deeply. But what I miss is the shorthand, the effortless understanding that comes from shared history. The way someone would ask if I have eaten without needing to ask why I skipped lunch. Or how someone would catch the wobble in my voice before I even realised I needed to cry. That kind of knowing takes time. And time, in this new world, feels rationed.

In the absence of that familiarity, I have noticed myself becoming quieter. Not because I have less to say, but because I am learning how to say it in a language that makes sense here. I am relearning the rules of being seen, of what it means to introduce yourself not just by name, but by presence. And I have realised that identity, for all our talk of individuality, is often a mirror. We understand ourselves by how others reflect us. When you are no longer surrounded by the people who knew you “before,” or People who shared any of your lived experiences, it becomes harder to trust your own reflection.

Who am I when no one here has seen the loudness, the leadership, the inside jokes, the unfiltered laughter? When they haven’t watched me speak up in a crowded classroom or stay back after events or write at 2 a.m. because I couldn’t sleep? When they don’t know the version of me that feels most like home?

I hesitate more now. I watch myself wondering, “Was that too much?” “Did that land weird?” “Should I have explained that better?” I edit before I speak. Not because I want to be inauthentic, but because I don’t yet know which parts of me are welcome.

I used to think becoming was a linear process. You grow, you learn, you arrive. But now I wonder if it’s more like a spiral where you circle back to similar questions at new depths. Who am I here? Who am I now? Who do I want to be next?

I am relearning the grammar of closeness. Of trying. Of reaching out even when it feels a little awkward. Of waving at the windows that once opened easily, and knocking gently now when they don’t.

It’s not a crisis. It’s not even despair. It’s just the in-between. The part where things feel uncertain, but not unbearable. And though it asks more of me than I am used to, I meet it willingly because these are my favourite kinds of trials: the ones that ask you to be more human, more open, more willing to begin again.

I suppose that’s the quiet heroism of it all, showing up every day, even when clarity is a luxury.

This quote from a recent favourite movie, Superman (2025), puts it perfectly:

“I am as human as anyone. I love, I get scared. I wake up every morning and despite not knowing what to do, I put one foot in front of the other and I try to make the best choices I can. I screw up all the time, but that is being human and that’s my greatest strength.”

There’s something comforting in knowing that even our heroes are uncertain. That’s the new punk rock. Not to always know, but to keep choosing anyway.