I was having an quarter life crisis last week. They’re not infrequent. When your classmates and friends are flashing their engagement rings, posting about their dinner with the “hubby”, announcing pregnancies, and buying paint for their picket fences, it is hard not to have a meltdown that you haven’t reached the pinnacle of life. Ugh.
I think to myself, “Juana, you need to get serious. You’re getting olllld. You’ll be thirty soon.” But, then I snap out of it. We’re long past the days of becoming a spinster/cat lady at twenty years old. Why is it so terrible that the new American Dream is to go after what you want, instead of striving for the “perfect equation” = husband + 2.5 kids + white picket fence.
You can’t imagine how many shocked faces I get when I tell people I’m not married yet. “Well, what are you waiting for?!” they ask. They’re even more shocked when I answer “It’ll happen when it happens.” Then, when I explain that Stephen and I want to travel, that we want to look for jobs in a lot of places and not just the city/state we’re currently living in, they really lose it. It boggles my mind that because we are doing things differently, they can’t seem to grasp the idea of different. And, while ultimately I can choose how these sour interactions affect me, it is these sour interactions that make me realize the single-mindedness of people. The issue doesn’t just lie in marriage. If someone wants to blog for the rest of their life, let them blog. Maybe, just maybe, that makes them happy. Perhaps, they want to stay at home with their kids. Become a vegan. Be a career student. Move to Timbuktu. Whatever. I may not agree with decisions that everyone makes, but, in the end, it’s their decision, not mine. Who am I to tell them that their dream is “wrong”? Because I can assure you that my dream is “wrong”, too.
Dreams of Bold 