The midlife crisis is a well-known phenomenon; you may even know somebody that's fallen prey to it and has suddenly developed a large collection of Hawaiian shirts, leather trousers or rock'n'roll compilation CD's. What's not so widely publicised though, is its preliminary attack; a smaller, but equally life changing milestone on the landscape of adulthood, the quarter life crisis.
As soon as you hit your mid-20's, you change. You start to realise that your parents were annoyingly right about a lot of things, your choice of TV becomes extremely questionable, and you spend the majority of your days wondering what you're doing with your life.
Here are 15 other things that happen in your mid-20's:
1. You need eight hours of sleep to be able to function, even then you're still tired.
2. You have a bed time now; 10.30, 11.15 latest. Anything after this spells doom for the morning, and a high risk of violence on the tube.
3. Remember when you could exercise for days? Well not anymore, now you injure yourself whilst getting ready for exercise, not by actually doing it.
4. You choose wine over spirits. But you haven't quite figured out your limits when drinking said wine...
5. Sometimes you run out of money and are swiftly reminded that deep down, you're still a child. A nearly 30-year-old child.
6. Your hangovers last anything from 1 - 3 days and leave you feeling one Ex On The Beach episode away from a body bag.
7. People younger than you really start to irritate you, and you will immediately dismiss them as being "only 12."
8. You lose control of your metabolism and only have to walk past a McDonald's sign to gain weight. You acknowledge this by eating family sized portions of food and looking at pictures of thin people.
9. You feel particularly rebellious when staying out past 9pm on a school night. You also start using the words 'school night', despite not having been at school for 10 years.
10. Exes no longer bring you pain and trauma, you instead begin to despise them more than people who haven't got their oyster cards ready by the time they reach the barriers.
11. All of your friends are getting married and having babies; you can't even get a confirmation text from your doctor's surgery.
12. You begin to evaluate everyone you've ever met on their dating / relationship / marriage potential.
13. Your mum is more concerned about your love life than your general well-being. If you're single, you will be constantly met with, "It'll happen when you least expect it" comments, despite voicing the fact that you're quite happy to die alone watching The Bachelor with your six cats.
14. Your body starts to prove that it's no longer indestructible by forsaking you with an untold number of ailments. Knee ache? Tick. Back ache? Tick. Heart burn? Tick. Weird eye twitch? Tick.
15. You no longer feel flustered if you don't have plans for the weekend. You feel flustered if you do. Your excuses have got so wild that you're starting to wonder who has abducted your soul and what have they done with it.