Saturday, January 15, 2011

Babies Getting Married

Welcome to 2011, dear readers, and my second quarter of grad school!  This quarter seems to be more relaxed than last quarter (knock wood!), which is nice, since I know that next quarter I'll be taking more classes, and from there the stress level will only go up.  I have an amazing schedule (I only have class Monday and Wednesday which means, due to this weekend's holiday, that I'm in the middle of a glorious six day weekend!) and a relatively light reading load, which means I can really go in depth into those readings I do have, and take the time to refresh my Latin, which I minored in in college but haven't looked at since May 2009, in hopes of taking my language exam in the spring.  At least that's my plan.

Since it's only week two of the quarter and I don't have too much exciting on the school front to discuss yet, I thought I'd talk about something only tangentially related to grad school and career: Babies Getting Married.

Now, when I talk about Babies Getting Married, I'm not referring to actual infants undergoing nuptial ceremonies.  I am, however, talking about people my age (I'm less than a quarter century old) tying the knot.  I have attended two weddings of my peers and dear, dear friends in the last seven months alone, and I know of several other friends, acquaintances, and former classmates who are engaged or married.  All of this has been a little overwhelming for me and my other as-yet-unmarried friends, and one of them coined the term, as she mentioned to me at the last wedding we attended (her second in less than two weeks!) that "Babies need to stop getting married!"

It's not that I have a particular reason for not wanting my friends to get married.  In fact, I'm not stressed out or unhappy about any one particular of my friends' marriages.  All of my married or engaged friends are wonderful people, and they joy I've been a part of at the weddings I have attended has brought even cynical me to tears.  I have no doubts that these marriages will last; they're all unions of adults who made the wonderful decision to commit to sharing their lives with each other.  But did you catch the word in the last sentence that has me freaked out about this whole situation?  I'll give you a hint: it starts with "a."

What terrifies me about the idea of my friends and other peers getting married is that all of a sudden I'm realizing that people my age are adults.  And if they're my age, and they're adults, well...that means I'm an adult.  And I'm not sure how to deal with that.  Certainly, I've been carrying out adult responsibilities (taking care of a pet, working a job, paying my own rent and bills, cleaning my own dishes, etc.) and enjoying adult privileges (these need not be listed here) for quite some time.  But the enormity of the idea of being a full-fledged adult - picking a partner, settling into a career, starting a family, picking the path that the rest of my life is going to follow - is still frightening.  And so long as these weddings keep making me face that looming adulthood, I'll keep (loving them and dabbing at my eyes and wishing so many congratulations and good thoughts to my lucky friends but also) making slightly snarky comments about too many Babies Getting Married.

No comments:

Post a Comment