Ever feel like you have so much you want to do with your life and it all seems to conflict, but they’re all so important you can’t let one dream go?
I’m 21. I have another year and a half of schooling left. I want four kids and a happy forever kind of marriage. I want to be a [insert sport here] mom. I want a big back yard that I have to drag the kids in from. I wouldn’t mind being a stay at home mom. I want to travel and see parts of the world, preferably as part of my job. I want to own a home. I want a dog that goes everywhere with me. I want to have a gorgeous front porch that I can watch the sun rise/set on while sitting in my rocking chair with a cup of coffee. Or a book. I want to be that mom that always has homemade snacks under the cake-case I inherited from my grandmother, just like she always did. I want my kids to come home covered in mud and dust and scrapes and to really have realized what it means to have fun. I want them to truly love their freedom, liberties, to be caring, kind, and smart. I want them to have the opportunity to have a dog as their best friend. I want to own horses one day, because I never have and I always wanted to. I want to go dancing on the weekends. I want to learn real dancing, like line-dancing, ball-room, or square-dancing. I want to see all the random little nooks and crannies and secret quaint towns that the US has tucked away. I want to have the freedom to do as I please, to live in a different state. I want to live in this state. I want to feel what it’s like to wake up next to someone I love. To be woken up in the middle of the night because someone has had a bad dream. I want to wake someone up because I can’t sleep and need to go on an adventure. I want to get more than my associate’s degree. I want to be in a position where I can teach. I want to be a leader. I want to coach swimming again. I want to live near water, in a forest, on a farm, in a town, by myself, with someone else, and in a place where when I look up at the sky my breath is taken away by the number of stars that glisten there. I want to live other places but can’t fathom going somewhere where I don’t have friends. I want to get into shape. I want to take a drop-everything-and-go road trip. I want to throw my own fancy cocktail party. I want to have the most relaxed country-chic wedding ever. I want to pick up an accent. I want to publish something that I’ve written and have more than a handful of people read it. And I feel like it needs to be done before I turn 30.
I’ve picked a profession that it takes time to really gain the experience I’d need to be able to be paid to travel, but it can be done. And I know feasibly I should just make this a pre-retirement plan. But I want to do it while I’m young. I want to be able to walk off a plane and into a town and say to myself “This is it. I’ve found my home.” I know that town exists.
My parents were married when they were my age. By the time I’m going to graduating from college they’ll have forgone an education and had their first child, been to CA and back to IN, bought their first house (the one we lived in until I turned 12). In contrast I don’t know where my life should be now. My friends all have significant others and/or plans. I feel like I’m either stalking them to a city or I fear for the place I go without them.
I love small towns, but can I really meet a significant other in a rural area? I feel almost like you have to meet singles in the city, and then you leave and go to the small town. But if they live in a city, they probably won’t want the small town. And then you’ll have left yet ANOTHER set of friends behind. And I can’t find one where I live now. The problem with your hometown in the Midwest is that people my age flee from it, and if they stay in the same hometown they have no intention of leaving. I’m an anomaly.
I’m a wanderer, I love to travel. But I am not happy if I don’t have roots sunk somewhere. I’m like the monarch butterfly; migrate thousands of miles but always knowing where to return to.
The thought of not having children until age 30 is bewildering to me. My parents were done with kids by then. They had the whole parenting thing down, and even had one old enough they could leave us home alone for an hour under his care. I hear the imaginary tick of my uterus, and at the same time know it’s completely ridiculous.
The most entertaining part of this whole debate is that I really can’t settle anything until after I graduate from school. So another 1.5 years before any of these decisions can really make an impact on my life/be considered.
So what is the point of this emotional dump? To make this statement: Your 20s are crazy. You do nothing but want and want and want and feel disappointed when you can’t/don’t make it. For some reason at the age of 21 you start to hear the first tick-tocks of the time clock, and despite the knowledge that you have another 40 years (most likely minimum) you can’t seem to stop yourself from feeling like you need to rush and hurry. And on the other hand you have this constant beckoning to just go take a nap because sometimes your dreams are so much more interesting than reality. (But that’s a tangent for another time.) My life has turned into the song Alabama song “I’m in a Hurry to Get Things Done”. (You know ‘I’m in a hurry to get things done / rush and rush until life’s no fun / all I really got to do is live and die / but I’m in a hurry and don’t know why’.)
So all of you who have survived the feeling of having desires that pull you 27,000 directions and don’t seem tangible and the ever-present feel of chomping at the bit to get life going: Any words of wisdom?
Insights of Shaley 