Not Serious

If I see another engagement post, I’ll throw my phone against the wall. 

I’m getting to the age when birthdays are less of an excitement and more of a heart-palpitating reminder of how fast time flies. I turn twenty-two in a month, and I know that is still very young, but the thought of being the same age as Taylor Swift when she released “Red” makes my chest cave in. The end of college is a time when it is painstakingly clear that a life can look very different from one person to the next. Some twenty-two year olds are getting married, others are starting six-figure salary jobs or going on tour, and some, like me, are baristas for twelve dollars an hour with a freshly acquired degree in Songwriting (a Bachelors of Science, I might add). So when I, two months after breaking up with my boyfriend and one month away from graduating college, saw that my high school best friend was getting married, I felt tragically behind in life. I had no romantic prospects, no job lined up, and no clue what I'd be doing for the next five years. 

I'm obsessed with averages. I've always compared myself to the norm, whatever that is. What's the average age to get married? Twenty-eight. Hurry up, you’ve got six years, including dating. What's the average time it takes to say I love you? Three months. I'm overly eager. Average time it takes to get over a breakup? Three months, and I've always exceeded that average. 

My first breakup knocked the wind from my sails, sucked the hope from my stomach and made me think that happiness would never again be attainable. The problem with my first boyfriend was that he too was obsessed with averages, but he always wanted to beat them. He told me he loved me two weeks into dating, to which I asked, Are you sure? and failed to reciprocate the words of endearment. He wanted to get married right out of college, and I didn’t know what I wanted to eat for breakfast that morning – I was always lagging behind him, or so I felt. I remember one time we were eating ice cream after an orchestra concert when he said, “I wanna live my life very seriously. Like, just be super intentional.” I didn’t know how to respond, so I just murmured “Mmhm” in agreement, but I felt convicted – was I living my life seriously enough?

Flash forward two years and another broken heart and the question still remained. It was a particularly gloomy day after my latest breakup, a bottom-of-the-bell-curve type day after things get worse but before they get better. I unlocked the door to my home with the weight of routine, threw my bag on the floor and grabbed my headphones to walk back out. I desired to listen to sad songs and play on the swingset: my resolution to, or perhaps encouragement of, this feeling. My roommate, Lydia, stopped me on my way out.

“Where are you going?”

“Off to the park,” I exhaled. “I just feel sad and need to get out.”

She looked up at me with an expression that said she was feeling the same way. 

“Can I join?”

So the two of us walked to the park down our street and collapsed on the swings like children to air out the heaviness of our days. She was in a new relationship, and I had just gotten out of mine, but we both felt the same breed of uncertainty. Lydia was deciding where she wanted to go to grad school and I was in the thick of preparing an application for a program that, if I were to be accepted, would send me to England for a year to teach creative writing to children. 

I laughed hysterically, “It all feels so random. Two months ago I had never heard of this town in England and now I’m planning a theoretical life there. I wonder if I’m making the right choice.”

“I don’t think there is a right choice,” she said thoughtfully. “Life is so open right now. I feel like there’s a lot of different versions of our life where we’re happy.”

Sometimes I think about all the strange and wonderful lives I could live if I were a little less serious. I could be a park ranger, throwing myself into the soil and memorizing the call of a blue jay or the shape of an oak leaf; I could live in a monastery, devote myself to God, rise at the strike of bells and practice a life that is centered completely outside myself. I could narrate audiobooks, Doordash on a bike, work on a farm and still, somehow, be happy even if I’m unmarried at twenty-eight. 

There are so many lives worth living. I think, often, of the lives I could’ve lived in past relationships, if only they’d lasted. God, I think about it so much it makes me sick. I think about us waking up in the same home years from now, the kettle boiling and a cat purring and someone to tell everything to. I think about my life in England, being free from all I know, starting something entirely on my own. I think about staying in Nashville and living with my best friends, pursuing music and writing. 

There are so many lives worth living. But I think I’m living the right one – or, at least, I’m choosing to believe that.