Graduation Contest: The Winner!
Graphic and iconic. The color choice and the spare illustration style give gravitas, and the little dangling tassel adds a touch of levity; moving the tassel from one side to the other wouldn’t make much of a difference here. Whatever else it is, leaving college is burying one’s youth.
(Dennis won two tickets to this event at the 92Y)
This article Tegan showed me expresses the basic fear I have (and that I am certain I am not alone in having). I don’t date much, and I don’t foresee this changing in the future, especially as I head to New York (because, honestly, how many men will I meet in the magazine industry?). I mull over why this could be. Is it me? Am I so undesirable? Or is it them—the boys, men, whatever they are? And the older I get, the more I resign myself to the idea of possibly not “finding someone.”
I’m not trying to be a Debbie Downer. It’s just that when I matter-of-factly say there is a very distinct possibility that in 10 years, I will not be much further along in my relationship timeline than I am now—well, my friends roll their eyes. They say, Whatever, you’ll get married. We’re so sure our friends will find partners because they’re them, not us. But this is not always the case. I have many older friends who are smart, capable, beautiful women who have reached (and in some cases passed) the normal age range for marriage. I admire these women, and I don’t see why it’s so unrealistic that I should be in their places in the future.
So, day by day, I try to adjust myself to this idea of singlehood. It was nice to read this article because the author, at 39, is one of these women, and she’s trying to pinpoint the problem. She says, “The decision to end a stable relationship for abstract rather than concrete reasons (‘something was missing’), I see now, is in keeping with a post-Boomer ideology that values emotional fulfillment above all else. And the elevation of independence over coupling (‘I wasn’t ready to settle down’) is a second-wave feminist idea I’d acquired from my mother, who had embraced it, in part, I suspect, to correct for her own choices.”
I know I don’t have to get married to lead a fulfilling life. Still, when I’m constantly bombarded by engagement photos and pictures of babies doing their first-everythings on my minifeed, it gets increasingly harder for me to not snap and write a passive-aggressive status.
The writer also says, “We took for granted that we’d spend our 20s finding ourselves, whatever that meant, and save marriage for after we’d finished graduate school and launched our careers, which of course would happen at the magical age of 30.”
I’m in my 20s now. And yet I’m oh-so-aware that I’m taking everything for granted, and I don’t know how NOT to. I should apologize. I don’t want PGL to turn into a place for why-am-I-single whining (which I call “WHY??ning”) because it gets under my skin when I hear other girls do it. That’s not it. No matter what happens, I’m trying to say that I should be able to accept that I might not have a significant other in 10, 15 years. I want to be okay with that future—and others to be as well.
-Malia
