My wasted 20's.
I spent the vast majority of my 20's waiting for marriage. Looking back, I'm horrified at How Much Time I wasted. I was reading today the newly published list of countries that I could have had a working visa for. So many more than I even imagined (France! Germany!) yet the cut-off age for all of these exciting places is 30.30.
I feel like I'm only just getting started in life, but doors are slamming in my face due to the age cut-off. 30 is an age where you're supposed to have it figured out. Where you've done the adventure thing and you're ready to settle. I'm SO far from that place and I wonder, how did I get it so wrong?
To be fair, the world set me up. Movies and novels (and even the church) promised fairytale romance. My parents fell in love at 16 and it lasted. My sisters/cousins got married at ages 19-21, of course I expected that my turn would soon come. So I did what any good Christian girl would do, kept going to church, lived with my parents (I SO wanted to do the same as my siblings, i.e. live at home until I got married because that was both beautiful and traditional), I got a job to pay off my university debts and begin saving for the future while I waited for my husband, and then....
...continued waiting. And waiting. And waiting.
(I should add that I went out, I met people, I tried new things, dated, I certainly didn't sit at home!)
I'd always had the dream of going to England with my boyfriend/husband: I know so many couples who've done that. The stories they told me were amazing, imagine having that kind of adventure with your best friend! Someone to share the good times and the tough times, someone to help alleviate the inevitable homesickness.
It got to the point where I was so bored, so frustrated, so depressed with my life of waiting, that I finally went on my own. But that was late 20's. There was only enough time for one, maybe 2, visas. I had plans to go to Canada after England (I HAD my visa), but that got slammed by Glandular Fever. Another entire year, GONE just like that. (For 9 months I lacked the physical strength required to move to another country by myself and to this day I don't have the pre-illness energy. I may never again.)
So now. I'm recovered. And I'm in Brisvegas again. I'm back to WAITING.
You could argue that all I have to do is change my frame of reference. But what more is there to life, than family and legacy? Okay, serving God, but oh, that feels empty when you don't share it with someone. And so... I travel. I go out there. I DO THINGS that are different, I experience everything this world has to offer.
And I regret my wasted 20's because those were the prime years to be adventuring instead of hoping for something that didn't come to pass.
posted by Nic @ 5:00 PM
1 Comments:
I also wasted my 20's but not the way you did. 19th Birthday on freighter bound for Saigon, 20th - Copenhagen, 21st London, 22nd Paris, 23rd Edinburgh, 24th somewhere outside of Moab. In the end though, I was desperately homesick and lonely, and would have loved to have found a homebody to come home to. I did eventually after more years, and 33 years later we are still married. Don't be so hard on yourself. Life doesn't come with a rulebook, including the bible which is full of contradictions and fictions. Try to really live a happy life, men find happy women much more seductive than those with breast implants.
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