Young, single, and not (too) jealous of my recently engaged peers
Perhaps I’m calling myself out as a true child of the early 90s, but for a greater part of my childhood I couldn’t wait to be fourteen like the girls in my beloved Babysitters’ Club books. Seriously, my life goal at ten was to wear a training bra and watch other people’s screaming children after school. Sixteen wasn’t even on the radar.
Never would I have imagined that I’d ever reach the ripe old age of twenty-something and actually start to feel left behind in life. But lately, it seems like everyone I know is finding that special someone and getting engaged. Almost daily, Facebook bombards me with updates about high school acquaintances preparing to embark on their new life with their soul mate. I’ve managed to preview at least half a dozen different wedding albums this summer and before this year I couldn’t have ever fathomed that my newsfeed would include people’s sonogram pictures.
Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not bitter. Okay, maybe I’m a teensy bit bitter. It’s just that one of the reasons I left my native Midwest behind for the usually smog-concealed big city lights and sprawling traffic-jammed highways of LA was because I swore to myself I would never end up married and pregnant before thirty like I knew most of my schoolmates were destined to.
But, although I’m not sure whether to blame falling madly in love with a completely inappropriate guy then losing him or the inevitable jump starting of my biological clock, I found myself all of a sudden wanting just that last year. Suddenly, I found myself drooling over pictures of girls’ engagement rings and sitting in a darkened theater watching the documentary Babies by myself in the middle of the afternoon.
Everyone knows you can’t force love to happen, although you can get artificially inseminated and make a baby happen, but I’m not sure a turkey baster is the best way to solve my feelings of crippling loneliness. So in the meantime, I will clench my eyes shut and turn my head when I see Modern Bride Magazine in the grocery store aisles and sweetly congratulate my old friends on Facebook and try to remember that I live in the city where, if you’re lucky, dreams come true and I am young, single, and surrounded by thousands of in-shape model-actors.
