The kids who were freshman when I was a senior graduated from college on Sunday. This realization exacerbated a feeling that's been creeping in for awhile now. I feel adrift. Deep in the throes of my quarter life crisis.
The thing is, I thought I was past it. With the wisdom and confidence of one who's been through it all already, I remember counseling fresh-off-the-college-boat Luke on how the first years out of college are a mess, but we move on and figure our shit out. One day he will be as pulled together and as comfortable with his shit as I am.
Hubris.
What a bitch.
Every day I feel further off course than the day before. Every day I ask myself, "What the fuck are you doing? What do you want?" I feel 22 again. Like the last 2 years didn't happen.
I am terrified of becoming my former roommate, Michelle. Michelle was 36 and seemed to hate everything about her life. She was living with two twenty-somethings she didn't speak to in an undecorated apartment. She was in job she hated that was going no where. She was taking classes at night to change that, but just used them as an excuse to be a raging bitch. All her friends and family had babies. She had recently broken up with her live-in boyfriend. She hated the fog. Sometimes she would drive out to the beach just because she 'needed to be near the water'. She was the kind of person who had bangs because she was shy. She seemed incredibly sad. I had to work very hard to hate her. But maybe I was projecting my own fears. Maybe she liked her life that way, and her being a bitch was totally unrelated.
The point is... I don't want to be in my mid-thirties and single. I don't want to be in my mid-thirties and in a dead end job. I don't want to be in my mid-thirties and living with people I don't know or want to know. Life is so short and you only get one. I don't want it to suck.
The other thing is... I know logically that most of my friends are in the same boat as I am: adrift, working weird odd jobs, still in school, about to go back to school, single, living with off-kilter roommates or parents. I know this is the age that all that happens.
But on the other side, I know people who aren't doing that at all. People that are in seriously long-term relationships (multiple years, living together, engaged, married). I know people who have careers, who are actual teachers. I know people who are preggo or raising babies. BABIES.
I frequently ask myself why I'm not one of those people. Someone who's married. Living with someone. A young mom. Someone with a career. I'm TWENTY-FIVE. That's old. Old enough to be all those things. Old enough to be famous.
The answer comes as easily as the question. I'm TWENTY-FIVE. That's young. I feel young. I don't feel old enough to be a mom. When I meet people my age who tell me they are married it wigs me out. And while living with someone would be awesome and exciting I don't feel nearly mature or financially/emotionally stable enough to be in that situation.
And then I wrote about another page and half elaborating on why it makes sense that I'm in such an amorphous, undirected stage in my life. But that page and a half got very personal. So nuts and bolts: it makes sense that I'm adrift, but that doesn't mean I like it. And I have no more handle on my life than I did when I was fresh-off-the-college-boat.
I don't want to move alone again. I'm trying to get Nate [and by proxy his girlfriend Bex] on board to move with me. Then we could do a Marshall/Lily/Ted thing wherever we go. Which could be great. And if not, then the obvious choice is D.C.. Aside from half of WM (grad and undergad) being in D.C. still, there's my family, Pete, and Toph. The transition back while jarring, seems like it would be an alleviation of this constant struggle to find people I connect to. Not to mention the theater scene out there makes WAY more sense to me than SF's... and I don't know why that is. So yet another avenue for friendships. And who knows, maybe Nate and Bex would stay around that area too even if we weren't living together.
