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*I wrote this three years ago and someone told me I sounded "desperate." I threw it the trash then, embarrassed for it to be read. However, looking back now, I think it is well written, though I definitely see the desperate thing. Anyway, why not share on BlogHer now?
For many Midwesterners, careers are merely work and sparkly-eyed big city fantasies are storybook and movies. I first noticed I was different just as college ended – and a triplet of girlfriends married their college sweethearts all within a month of each other. At 16, I'd given myself a substantial deadline for marriage – 25. Pretty standard for Southern Indiana but not so, I would soon discover, for those inhabitants of coastal concrete cities and chilly, heel-pounded metropolises like Washington DC and New York City.
As my classes ended, life's definitive spring fever emerged. It was a restless energy not fit for county lines. While my parents still awkwardly passed detested high school classmates in the grocery store aisles and my Grandparents lived in the same house they bought in 1961, referring to the neighbor's 45-year-old children as "the kids," I wanted something more. Home was good for nostalgic summer memories and Christmas vacation but permanent habitation seemed a boxed in pit of lackluster years to come.
Babies before hitting a quarter of a century are okay for the some modest families of four who exemplify typical Indiana. For many students attending state universities in the midwest, college is just a side-step to marriage and family—not a shy reflection of the 1959 when my grandmother joined a sorority and met my grandfather as he pumped her gas at the Shell station.
The average age for marriage has increased by 2 years for both genders since 1980, but those in Midwestern and centralized American states have consistently anchored that number while the city populace of decadent dreamers remains elevated.
The party doesn't end with college for them. Rent may have to be paid but late night partying only blurs into early evening happy hours in trendy bars and historic pubs across the street from office buildings – playing host to every stripe of social group, book party and political fundraiser. The city lover's social hour is the Midwestern mom's play date, swapping a dirty martini for a bottle of formula.
Entry-level grads distribute freshly printed business cards in restrooms, stairwells, and parking lots fashioning connections to the top – or so they hope. In the midst of stocking up a resume, locking in name drops and eyeing the next opportunity, there's no time to think about babies.
But in Indiana and Kansas and Montana, it's different. Keeping tabs on high school classmates is a free subscription to my past as Facebook feeds me daily engagement updates. Weekly, I'm bombarded with new wedding photos—of the girl I had freshman biology with, the kid I hated in fifth grade gym class or my best friend's little brother. My 24-year-old sister just got married, bought a house and settled south of Indianapolis. And even though I read the Washington Post Express on Fridays just to check out the engagement photos, I know I didn't fail my 16-year-old dream.
I'm almost 27 – a mere 11 months past prime marriage age for women – but the stark difference between my college-like three bedroom apartment life and my friends back home dusting the corner's of their modular homes (that would cost a million dollars if plunked in the middle of the city) – is vast.
My roommate of the same age hails from Fairfield, Connecticut – a city skittering on the edges of New York. She frequently reminds me that her friends are just now hitting the relationships that head toward marriage and kids.
While I've got a pastel mini-bundle of bridesmaid dresses draped – and wine-stained—in the closet, she's just
