Before I truly begin to release all of the pent-up angst that this article will reveal, let me just clarify the direction of my annoyance. I don’t have anything against love. I’m not that angry girl at the end of the bar muttering into her beer about how relationships are for suckers. I believe in love. I was raised on a strict diet of Disney movies and fairy tales. I think that if you’re lucky enough to find someone that likes you so much that they want to spend every day with you for the rest of their life, you should stick to them like white on rice. But promising to marry that person before you’re old enough to legally drink at your own bachelorette party is one of the most ludicrous things I have ever heard.
There is something to be said about your early twenties as an age for growth and self-identification. Sure, college is a great time to get a taste of independence and find who you are, but it’s not the real deal. It’s not until you have graduated, become employed and are fully responsible for your own well-being that you can truly consider yourself an adult. And yet, many of the people around me have chosen to make adult decisions before ever leaving their beloved college town.
In the days between Christmas and New Year’s Eve, my Facebook was blowing up with engagement announcements from high school classmates. Each new post elicited some sort of shout or curse word from myself, until I was eventually numb to the new “Engagement Pictures!!!!!!!!!!” albums that popped up in my News Feed. To me, it seemed that with college graduation looming, kids my age were jumping head first into the “real world,” and what better way to do that than to pick up a life partner? For me, however, there are much better ways to spend the next few years of your life.
Personally, I have some big plans for my twenties, and none of them include a man. I want to travel and to find a job that I love and that is fulfilling. I want to make mistakes and be irresponsible and only have to be accountable for myself. To me, that is freedom. If a guy comes along who wants to share in those experiences, that’s fine – just as long as he understands that I need to find out who I am before becoming someone else’s wife.
Maybe my classmates that are currently planning their weddings have already passed through that stage of their lives. Maybe that’s why I don’t understand their decision to bind their future to someone else’s at such a young age. All I know is that when I watch my friends celebrate their love for another person through marriage, I will smile and join in their happiness and know that someday, when I’m ready, they will do the same for me.
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