I should be committed.

I went to the wedding of a friend this weekend. Here's an artist's conception of the difference
between my friend, getting married at 23, and how I would appear, getting married at 23.
Kristin is the Blonde.

Note the subtle differences in affect and expression. Note the attitude of peace and joy evidenced in the portrait of my friend, Kristin, on her wedding day. She wore her mother's wedding dress, carried chrysanthemums and sunflowers (a perfect combination for a late summer wedding). Now, if I'd been in her position, I'd have made some subtly different choices. Such as being so insanely overwhelmed by the concept of commitment that I become, instantly, afflicted with pyromania, trichotillomania, and excess salivary output. I would probably use the tasteful bouquet as tinder.

It's worth mentioning that Kristin is the one who taught me how to light a fire. She was a girl scout. She's a Fullbright scholar. She's bilingual and the most amazing optimist and idealist. She knits and sews and doesn't eat things that are coerced out of animals.

I love bacon and not fulfilling requirements. I may not have brushed my teeth today. I keep thinking I'll start a novel, but I'm afraid to commit to anything more than ten pages long. I lose sleep over my gym membership. I want a tattoo, but the thought of purchasing something that, ideally (barring regret and laser removal, or accident and amputation) I'll be wearing when I die, is just too morbid.

I don't want to get married at 23. I'm not sure I ever want to get married. I'm also resentful that I can't decide not to get married based on my insane fears and personal disdain for going out on any kind of emotional limb. I can't decide not to get married because I just can't get married. Twenty three isn't adult enough to get married around here. Life is just too expensive, and requires too much training. I can't pay my own car insurance, and have no serious hopes of being able to any time in the next couple years. I'm a student. Maybe soon I'll be a law student. That's years of schooling. That's years of extended adolescence. That's years of living the transient life of a bright nineteen-year-old, pizza and beer and coupons and classes.

I don't want to get married. But I want to have a life. I want to have an independent life. I want to support myself. I want to be an adult. It aches, a little, seeing my friend's adulthood affirmed. Her fornication is now fully societally endorsed. Her closest peer, her only backup, is someone she's chosen. I'm living in some sad gray area. I'm an undergrad, but so old to be one. I'm working a teenager's job for a teenager's salary. I'm in an alleged serious relationship, but haven't even had the endorsement of introducing that relationship to my family. My boyfriend hasn't introduced me to anyone, either. He's too old to bother, and I'm too young to feel comfortable. How am I supposed to introduce this person to my family, when I realize that the only reason he and I live even psuedo-equivalent lives is because of my family's generous bankrolling of my lifestyle?

I wouldn't be able to afford my apartment if my parents didn't help me with rent a little during the school year. I wouldn't be able to drive if my parents didn't give me car insurance for Christmas. I wouldn't have the privacy to disappear over the weekend to play grownups with this man, or even the means to get there, without my parents. I wouldn't have a hope of finishing college and starting a life without them. I'm a child allowed to play at being an adult, given the patient indulgence of my parents, and the benign, willful denial of my personally irresponsible circumstances by my boyfriend.

I want to be a real person, so desperately. This is getting Livejournal. Fuck it. I just wish I'd finished school at one go, at 21. I just wish I'd picked a path at 17 and stuck with it. I wish I had some of the optimism or independence or confidence or sheer BALLS that Kristin has.