My Quarterlife Crisis

"It’s so hard to get old without a cause
I don’t want to perish like a fading horse
Youth is like diamonds in the sun
And diamonds are forever
So many adventures couldn’t happen today
So many songs we forgot to play
So many dreams are swinging out of the blue"
- "Forever Young"
Alphaville

Next week I turn 27. I will have been in this Earth for almost 10,000 days, which seems truly astounding.
How did I suddenly wake up and realize that I am about to be 27? Where did the last third of my life go?
The first seventeen years seemed to go by amazingly slow - waiting to go away to college seemed to be my goal from the first moments I remember.
Seventeen to twenty were spent "on my own" at college - waiting to use my real license to buy beer, no longer being the girl from Cleveland, Georgia, who I vaguely resembled (at best) on my ID.
Twenty and the beginning of twenty-one were all about entering the real world - how great it would be to finally have a real income, be done with the "meaninglessness" of penning papers and doing group projects.
Graduation came and went, dropping me in Corporate America at the age of twenty-one.
Why am I not in college anymore? Why can't I sleep in on the days that I get home too late? Living at home again, drinking more than I drank in four years of college.
Twenty-two, on my own again, going out way too much. Working more hours than I ever have in my life, watching all of my friends get married.
Always the bridesmaid, never the bride.
Twenty-three, twenty-four - serious relationshipdom. I want to be settled, I want to be married like everyone else. I want a guy who isn't a player, someone who will treat me well. Life is quiet and domestic. We cook a lot of dinners, watch a lot of rerun television.
Twenty-five - it feels like ages since I had a "real job" - years of reciting salad dressings and draft beer offerings have worn me thin. Retail is tiresome - I want a real job again, and I will have one.
Twenty-six - friends are having babies, divorces, weddings. I am moving home with my parents.
And so is the cycle of life. Enter the quarterlife crisis.