
Turning 25 was hard on me. Two years prior and fresh out of college, I had set off on what was supposed to be the experience of a lifetime -- a yearlong adventure across Asia, starting in Taipei living with my brother and his girlfriend (soon to be ex-wife...let's just gloss over the marriage part since it didn't last very long), teaching in Bushi-bans (that taught "American" English) for a few months in order to earn enough cash for passage on the folklore-laden, Agatha Cristie-immortalised Siberian Express, which would take my brother, his girlfriend Echo, and me across China, up through Russia and through Eastern Europe until we wound up in London, the city I'd dreamt of since childhood and which, in 1991, was still humming with teddy-boys, punks, and drugged up "nuns" sauntering along Kings Road listening to the Sex Pistols, Brian Eno, Roxy Music, Duran Duran and Heaven 17 on boom boxes...heaven, indeed. Then we'd fly home to the States together, full of wonderful stories of jade-colored mountains, $1 noodle dishes from roadside stands, myriad languages we couldn't speak or understand, and eccentric, fascinating, tragic and joyful people we'd met along the way.
But I came back three weeks later because I'd somehow convinced myself that my spirit wasn't large enough to take the opportunity I had. I thought then that I was too old. That it was something you did while you were still in college. I seemed to think that I needed to grow up, get a job with the degree I had, get an apartment and start paying bills. What was the fucking hurry?, I ask myself now. I was fucking TWENTY-THREE!
So I greeted 25 with a profound sense of failure. By that time, I had done pretty much what I had set out to do: I got a steady job at a hotel doing reservations (not using my degree at all); I got an apartment with a lease. I was paying for my own tires, cooking my own meals, and being smug in my independence. Not so surprisingly, a co-worker discovered my very first gray hair on my 25th birthday. No joke.
So here I am, 13 years later. In that time, I have procured a mortgage, a master's degree, a reliable and distinctly UN-sexy car, and an effin' awesome credit score. I have also been away from my hometown for 11 years. In 2000 (perhaps the best year of my life), I accomplished dreams I'd had for years: mainly, finally going to London (I've been three times now), traveling to other places I thought I'd never see (though not as much as I'd hoped by this point), and meeting Duran Duran in person. I have the picture to prove it.
I was 32 when that picture was taken. Being able to give that gift to my teenage self -- a self who believed she would never see Westminster Abbey in person or shake Simon LeBon's hand -- was bolstered by confidence so much that the next year I dropped 15 pounds and felt like I could take on anything I wanted to do: full-time freelancing, marriage, worldwide travel, you name it. Check out this happy, hot mama...
Well, that isn't exactly what's happened in the six years since. It's been an interesting ride, and I suppose I've done a lot. I have a gazillion friends and acquaintances -- so many I can't even go across the country without bumping into someone I know. I feel like I've sucked the marrow out of the independence I have created for myself. Better than marrying right out of college, having babies, and suddenly realizing you don't know who you are because you never gave yourself the chance to explore it, I told myself.
But here I am, just like the frazzled wife and mother, in the reality I have created for myself. And despite always feeling older than I really was, with the barometer of "what have you accomplished by this time in your life" having nipped at my heels for years and people telling me, "For God's sake...you have plenty of time"...well, they aren't telling me that now. I am teetering at the precipice of (gasp) middle age. And I have come to realize that it doesn't matter whether you got married and had kids early on. The weight of the choices you made bear down on you like an anvil. It's not like I took advantage of my unfettered life the way the world expects of a single woman. I'm not burning up the corporate ladder or enjoying the job of my dreams that pays me so much money that I could retire tomorrow if I wanted to...if ever. I have a modest life, a modest income, virtually no relationships with my own siblings, much less my extended family, leaving me with a feeling of dwindling security.
Now that I find my dreams of youth fading before me, I want something to work on. Something to work
toward that will have lasting value. Be it a marriage or a child or both. I don't care how hard it is. I don't care how tired it makes me. Anything's better than having nothing to work toward that's bigger than just little old me and my little existential crises.
As recently as five years ago, I had maintained the position that kids just weren't for me. I perceived them the same way my father did: they steal your youth, your energy, your dreams, and your money (which is exactly what my siblings have done). They don't ever give back what you gave them. As for marriage....well, that's different. I always wanted to be married. Always. But I was almost ashamed of it and never admitted it. I didn't have girlhood dreams of a big white dress to match the big white cake. I thought that was all stupid, and I pitied my friends whose dreams were so pedestrian.
When I was younger, I was actually excited at the prospect of being on my own for the rest of my life, because I thought I'd be the woman everyone envied. I would embody the regrets those wives and mothers my age struggle with today. I'd be the woman with the cool job everyone would go "Wow" over. The woman whose life would resemble Justine's on Lonely Planet. The woman who, while fully immersed in the joy and simplicity of doing what she likes when she likes, would stumble upon a man so captivated by her radiance, happiness, lust for life and independence that he'd want to roam with her forever.
Who knows if this will ever happen? I try to keep hope alive that it will, or that if it doesn't, I will find a true passion in my life that gives it meaning beyond the confines of my own existence. But, dang it...with every failure I survive, the hope that some lesson will arise that will help me transcend this feeling of just frittering time away sometimes seems the furthest thing from me, leaving me to feel like a mouse on a wheel. Kinda like what Pink Floyd says, "Runnin' over the same old ground, but have we found the same old fear? Wish you were here."
After all, time REALLY is a-wastin'.