25 And Still Not Married

“So, you’re going to be twenty-five.”

My Medzmama smiles and shakes her head at me.

“I got married when I was twenty-five, I had your mother when I was twenty-six.”

I don’t say anything, hoping that the awkward silence will veer her away from the direction this conversation is going. But subtlety is not among my Medzmama’s many admirable qualities.

“So you have no one special?”
“No Medzmama.”

“No one you want to marry?”

It takes a lot for me not to point out that if I don’t have someone special, how could I possibly have someone I’d want to marry?

These conversations come out of nowhere and tend to leave me wondering what I’m doing with my life.

Lately it feels like everyone on my Facebook feed is married and having children and I’m sitting at home watching Frasier with my cat.

Of course that’s not all I’m doing. I work full time in a public school and am involved in my community through a variety of different groups, all generally focused on Shared Economy. I am working on a project called ImPACT Fest that exemplifies and promotes Shared Economy in Hartford. I’m learning to knit and I like to pretend that I can cook. I am planning a trip to Armenia in the Fall of 2015 and I am looking into graduate school programs for when I return.

Despite all of this I still find myself constantly fielding questions about my relationship status.

The reality is that I don’t feel that I’m anywhere near prepared to get married and have a family and yet everyone else seems to be. I know that I'm making the right decision by not rushing into things. At least I think that I know that. The more I compare myself to others the more I start to question my own logic.

How is it that now, at almost 25 harrowing years old, I seem to be less confident in my decisions than I was in college? How is it that things which seemed so clear to me then are now up for debate again? Like if I want children or not. Like if I think I’ll marry someone and live in a house with them and own a washing machine. These are the real questions.

When I tell my Medzmama that no, I do not have anyone I’m going to marry, she tries to be understanding.

“Well,” she says with a sad smile “that’s okay, you work hard.”

I know that it’s not really okay for her, but luckily my Medzmama values hard work above all else so I’ve managed to redeem myself…this time. 

Let’s hope I never am out of a job.

My cat, Nephthys, naps professionally.

Subway Rides

The doors of the train take an exceptionally long time to open at the Union Square stop. It's not just today, they take longer at this stop everyday-something about the cars aligning. Even though I know they won't open right away, I still stand shoulder to shoulder with all the other passengers locked in a ferocious, silent, passive aggressive battle to be the first off the train. We stare through the murky plastic at the people on the other side, also standing shoulder to shoulder, engaged in the same pointless and unspoken dispute.

Every pregnant second that passes I feel more and more uncertain of the fact that the doors will ever open. I imagine the horror of being trapped in this packed subway car next to these strangers who, even on the best days, stare as if they are plotting how best to murder one another. I wonder how long it will take for chaos to ensue after it has been established that the doors will not be opening.

I imagine one woman strangling another with her head phones. A man breaks his Kindle over someones head while a child sinks its teeth into his calf. The old lady sitting down starts hacking away at the legs of those standing with her formidable plastic cane while the people outside the doors stand watching, not giving an inch.

When the doors do open, it's all I can do not to run off the train and away from the crazed strangers.

All The Time In The World

    The last few months before graduation were perhaps the most stressful of my college career. It was not because of the school work, I had developed a strategy for dealing with insane amounts of work which involved a twenty-four ounce can of Red Bull, an isolated room in the library, and a long stick for poking anyone within a fifteen foot circumference who attempted to approach me. 

    Rather, it was the terrifying prospect of not having the comforting title of “college student” anymore. When someone asked me what I was doing with my life I could respond that I was going to school and the pressure was off, at least partially. I could shrug off the other unpleasant questions like “What are your plans for the future?” or “Where will you go for graduate school?” because being in school implied that I would figure it out along the way. I was in college and everyone knew that going to college was the only way that you could get a job and make money and be successful. The future? I couldn't be bothered to worry about it, my Creative Writing degree would take care of that when the time came.

   Somewhere in my subconscious I must have been aware of how utterly unprepared I was. This awareness started to manifest itself in the final few months of my senior year. I was extremely anxious and grew irritable whenever someone brought up the topic of graduation. I entertained wild notions of intentionally failing all my classes just so that I would be forced to stay another semester and thereby buy myself a little more time to figure things out.

    Needless to say, I did not fail my classes. I attended the Commencement ceremony and it was not until I was sitting among row after row of black angular hats, sweating under the synthetic fabric and fiddling with the program that I actually felt excited about graduating. It wasn't any of the speeches at graduation that inspired or moved me, but something one of my professors had said to me in the final weeks as I sat in her office feeling inept.

    

“You will never have more time than you do right now.”

   Although it didn't feel like it, I knew that she was right. Having just graduated college with no obligations to anyone but myself, no real job and no plans for the future: I have all the time in the world.