Have you ever noticed that kids have a tough time figuring out age? Anyone that looks and acts like a grown-up is automatically about 40. Just for a laugh, I routinely ask my 5-year-old neighbors how old they think I am. Their most recent guess was 45. I told them that their mom isn't even close to 45 years old, and that I am younger than their mom.
Their next guess was 50. It's like living next to a comedy club.
Today is my 25th birthday. When I was younger, I always thought I would be married and maybe even have a kid by the time I turned 25. Especially when I was a kid, and didn't really understand age, I thought that 25 was the same as my parents' ages. You know, like, after you got to stop going to school, you turned magically into a mom or dad, and after getting gray hair, you became a grandma or grandpa. I had no understanding of the concept that one's choices contribute to certain outcomes. Like most kids, I thought it was just automatic and that it happened to everyone.
If you don't believe me, here's another example from my wonderfully wacky neighbor girls: this is my second year of being a nanny for a beautiful little boy named Tyler. He is a little older than one and a half now. At the end of last school year, his parents were in the process of moving and some days it just worked easier for his mom to bring him to my house, which is near her workplace. My house is not exactly set up for toddlers, especially one who loved to explore and put things in his mouth. So I took him over to play with the neighbors. I told the girls that Tyler was the little boy that I take care of during the day while his parents at work. That seemed to make sense to them. but then the next time I saw them, a Saturday, they asked me where Tyler was. I replied that he was at home with his mom and dad. One of the girls said, "I thought you were his mom."
Five-year-olds just don't have to think about things like never seeing me pregnant and never seeing Tyler as an infant. I know they know that babies have to grow inside their moms first because they had a little brother and two years ago I had many excited (albeit logically inconsistent as only children can) conversations about the baby growing in their mommy's tummy. To their mind, it just made sense for me to all of a sudden have a child because I was a grown-up.
As I grew older, I better understood how age works and how the typical life events timeline involved time in college, a "real" job, marriage, and then kids, according to my parents and my church. You wouldn't go straight to hell if you got pregnant before you were married, but they made it abundantly clear that they would be very disappointed if things went in that order.
The first time I met with my school counselor was in the first few months of 9th grade, when the counselors try to touch base with student in the class. I remember him asking me, "Andrea, where do you see yourself in ten years?" I didn't know how to answer, since I didn't know yet what I wanted to be when I grew up. So I gave a standard answer: "I see myself married, maybe starting to have kids, graduated from college, and working at whatever job I went to college for." 25 seemed like such a far way off - ten years was plenty of time to find the person I was supposed to marry and have babies with him.
Now, here I am, just turned 25 years old seven hours ago, and I have completed exactly one of the things that I told my counselor I wanted to have completed ten years later. I did graduate from college, but I'm not working at a job I went to college for. I am not a mom. I am not married. I am not even close to married. Sometimes, that makes me sad. Like I'm behind somehow. Like I'm missing some key trait that other girls have. Like my shelf life is running out.
I can usually put these feelings away and focus on other things, but they're still there. However, there are a few things in my life that I never would have thought to hope for at age 25. Things like:
1. I have a job that I absolutely love, even though I didn't go to college for it.
2. I am a grad student in a field that finally feels right to me. Teaching, which is what I went to college for, never felt like a good fit, and I'm glad that I didn't go into teaching just because other people expected me to.
3. I know my values and I haven't compromised them for anything. Furthermore, I formed those values as a single person, which means that I know what I'm looking for in someone else.
4. I am not in debt to the federal government, unlike thousands of other young adults in this country. I never would have thought of this as something to look forward to when I was only 15, but as I see my friends and colleagues navigate the repayment of those loans, I grow more and more thankful.
5. I am surviving depression. The CDC estimates that 1.6% of deaths in the United States in 2010 were suicides. This seems like a small percentage, but it equates to 38,364 people who completed suicide that year. You know what isn't recorded? The many thousands of people who attempt suicide each year because of mental illness. So while I definitely wouldn't have said "living with depression" when asked where I see myself in ten years, the 'living' part is something that I'm proud of.
I'm slowly learning to be content with where I am instead of frustrated by not being where I think I should be. Here's to another 25.
