25 is like standing on the coast of some vast and seemingly unknowable sea. As the tidewaters of adulthood lap at your feet you are alternately drawn to the depths and repulsed by them. Some days you stare longingly across the expanse, towards the future. Happy images of houses, weddings, and babies crowd your vision and you say confidently “yes, I am ready”….and other days you want to run screaming all the way back to the beach house where your friends are waiting with a case of High-Life and a pack of Camels. The biggest problem with 25 is that for what is maybe the only time of your life, both are equally acceptable. Sure we all knew those girls that married at 18 and by 25 have already settled into a routine of little league and vacation bible school, trading their pom-poms for pacifiers and creating a new family before they even really left their own. Maybe those girls are happy, maybe they are just doing what someone expected, but that’s beside the point because I always knew I wasn’t one of those girls. Of course we also know those women who at some point well past the age of 30 or so can still be found at bars on weeknights. Whether they have careers or drug habits, they have cats at home and not much else. Maybe they are happy too, but I’m not one of them either. At least I don’t think so. See the farther you are away from 30 or whatever other magical number marks adulthood to you the easier it is to imagine who you will be then. At 18 I was certain that by 30 I’d be married with children and a master’s degree, at 25, I’m not so sure. You think, when you are younger that at some point it won’t be confusing anymore, that life will stop pulling you in two different directions, that one day you’ll just wake up and know what you want. Today is the day I no longer want to watch horror movies at 4 am, or spend my day off, stubble-legged in pj’s reading on the couch. Today is the day that I would happily get up at 7am to turn over to see, not a de-stuffed dog toy or a handsome stranger but my husband, whom I have seen every morning for some extended period of time and intend to see for the rest of my life, every morning, every one. Sometime I can even convince myself of this for multiple days in a row. But then something happens, a wink from a cute stranger, a late Thursday with the “coffee night crew,” or realizing I have to choose between doing laundry and eating Taco Bell and I think “who am I kidding?” I cant be a wife, a mother. Married people don’t do those things. Then comes the inevitable internal dialogue of “why?” “Why can’t I still see my friends and stay out till 4 am even if I’m married?” “Why do I have to keep my legs shaven just because I have a husband?” and the answer is simply “because.” Because you think you should, because other people think you should, because we are told to, because if you don’t why did you bother? If nothing is going to change then why change anything? Step two is rebellion. “Well I’m not gonna” I’ll do it my way,” no I wont. Step 3. Despair. I’ll never be good enough step 4. Rejection. Well fine, I don’t want to do it anyway, who wants to be an old fuddy duddy, I”ll have fun forever…..continue circle ad infinitum. Because what I really want is just to know what I want, to know it whole heartedly and then to have the means to do it. Whether its marriage, children, a career, etc I’m just ready to know…
