I long ago stopped asking myself if I have arrived where I thought I would be by my age. When I was 5 years old and wondering (with awe and disbelief) what I would be like at 17, or 25, or--gasp, 30, I suppose I thought I would be like my parents. By the time they were in their 30s they had already achieved the trifecta of adulthood: married, owned a home, and had a kid (me) on the way. I'm nowhere near any of the above, nor am I certain that I aspire to any of the traditional trappings of adulthood.
I'm 32 today, and still figuring out what it means to be a woman of a certain age. A woman who is unmarried, doesn't own a house, doesn't have children. Is still trying to decide what she wants to be when she 'grows up.' Doesn't even think she wants children. Is in fact wary of the entire institution of marriage. Whatever my life has in store for me, I know it won't look anything like my parents. I live in a prohibitively expensive city where home ownership is a pipe dream, and I am part of a generation of women with ubiquitous, cheap, convenient forms of birth control. All of which is definitely not making me want to flee to the suburbs. I love living in a city. I love having the freedom to travel. I'm not going to lie, I think I could live this way forever.
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