"Do You Still Want To Play In The Grass Outside? " or "The Age Where Friends Get Married"

I suppose I have finally reached the age where my friends are getting married. I have reached the early twenties where things like weddings, having babies, getting STD's, and buying car insurance are all possible. These have always been the sorts of things I read about and knew that grown-ups dealt with, being arrested, sent to prison, having drug problems, filing for bankruptcy. Is 21 really when these problems become real?

Not that getting married is a problem. It was a lovely ceremony, good food at the reception, country music and christian songs were playing. There were matching bridesmaid dresses, a chocolate fondue fountain, and even the Electric Slide. But I feel leaps and bounds behind this girl, who is a few months my junior and has only freshly reached the ripe old age of 21. Even the thought of myself being married seems ludicrous, and the idea of having money for a wedding, and buying a house, and getting onto someone else's health insurance. I am nowhere NEAR entertaining the possibility of these things, and it's hard to fathom that there are people my age who are.

I'm not entirely immature, I would say. I make my own money, I pay my own bills, I have a job and car and utilities and I do my own laundry. But many of these things still feel like far-off issues I'll deal with, they still seem on the other side of forever. I don't know what's keeping me in denial. My sister is two years away from graduating, something that I can't even deal with because I can't accept that she's not five years old anymore. My parents are thinking about moving, my cat of 15 years just died, I have a loan and a credit card to pay off and my best friend from 6th grade just got married. Why do I still feel like a kid wearing a grown-up costume?

It probably has something to do with the Hello Kitty toaster in my kitchen, the My Little Pony Snowcone machine in my closet, and the 12 Dora the Explorere episodes on my computer.

Whatever.

<3gen