Turning 25

Young Leader Lotte, from Netherlands, shares their experiences of life and mental health at this milestone age.

Turning 25 is a huge milestone for me. A bigger milestone than 16, 18 or 21. Kind of weird, but not for me. In 2023 I finished my two master’s degrees, and I started working. In 2023 I found myself and I found my people. In 2023 I found my perspective and my goals. It is a good year. Getting my two master’s degrees is not just the end of my school career, but also the end of my childhood.

When I was 8 years old I was diagnosed with autism. The years before the diagnosis consisted of a lot of conversations and doctors. After the diagnosis, the treatment started, and I became a part of the system in the Netherlands. In the decade that followed, I lived in group homes and had dozens of conversations and multiple treatments. Growing up in a health care system in the Netherlands is not easy, because it changes all the time. The school was my only safe space because it was consistent even when my personal life in the group homes was a mess. I left youth care when I was 19 years old, and I wanted nothing to do with care. In those years I learned how to contain my emotions, how to keep myself small, how to listen to people when they say that I can’t do something and how to present myself as socially accepted in society. It taught me to keep a mask on. 

After all those years of intense care, I was lost. I didn’t want more care that was connected to youth care, and I found it difficult to process everything that happened. My breaking point came in the summer of 2021. The mask that I wore and told to keep on was too heavy to carry. I just couldn’t do it anymore. It made me re-evaluate my life and my identity. With the help of antidepressants, I started to see that my identity was created by other people and that everything I learned during my childhood was to be a socially accepted human being who could function in today’s world. 

That is where my new life began. With a clear mind, I looked at my life and at my ambitions. It was curiosity that pulled me out of a deep black hole, and it was motivation that kept me from falling back in. 2022 was a year of freedom. Freedom from the restraints of that socially accepted me.

And now you might wonder? 

Now I am 25 and the safe space that used to be school is now me. I am my own safe space. Turning 25 means for me that I am me. That I am who I want to be. Turning 25 is leaving behind my past and focusing on the present and the future. It is feeling young again and having the freedom to be young!