Life Unexpected

my cousin is working on his college applications. my cousin, 10 years my junior, will be going to college soon.

10 years ago i was in the same place. a sweet-faced kid with naive notions of the world. fast forward 10 years and i still have the sweet face but cynicism has eaten away at the naive notions the same way hungry hungry hippos consume their white pellets.

my life hasn’t quite turned out the way i expected. i am 27 years old and when it comes to my love life there is none. perhaps rachel greene said it best when she said “i’m not getting married. i’m not even close”.

in jr high our teacher had us write where we would be 10 years in the future. i would get a high school sweet heart. he’d be an athlete because i wanted to borrow his jacket, the one with the team name and leather sleeves. he’d send flowers to my class or maybe a pizza because i’d get hungry in the afternoons. after we both graduated from college we would get engaged and be married two years later. we’d be working full time in well-established industries. we would have our first kid by the time i turned 28. we'd have two kids and a dog.

well, that didn’t quite happen. the closest thing to a boyfriend since college has been zq. we can't count posey either. it's not really a relationship if the other person doesn’t even know of your existence.

there's still time before i turn 28 but it's highly unlikely i will go through dating, engagement, marriage and kids in four months. yes I know it is possible to get all those things done but it would be crazier than being in a pretend relationship.

relationships take work and I don’t think I have the time. no, let me rephrase that. i haven’t met someone i’m willing to make time for and vice versa.

maybe when all my friends are married off i will feel the pressure to do the same. but for now i say to my 14 year old self all idealistic and wide-eyed, we will just have to go buy our own pizza and if you still want that kid we can adopt one from a foreign country and be just like one of them celebrities out in hollywood.