My 20 year high school reunion is coming up. Got the email invite from an old friend. He hoped I would want to go. Not in a million years. I mean, yes, I want to go. I want to see those amazing wierdos so bad, but no. Just no. I can’t imagine how whincingly, gut wrenchingly terrible it would be to have to sit there and answer questions about my life and hear the stories and see the photos of everyone else’s [children] lives. At least I can’t imagine doing it without consuming dangerous, dangerous amounts of alcohol. And of course, that would without fail lead to the public humiliation of bursting into tears after the 10th old girlfriend told me about her 5th set of twins. So for my mental health and for the benefit of all of my old pals who do not need to know how beleaguered and desperate I have become, I am not going.

But you know, as impending 20 year reunions are want to do, this has really gotten me thinking. About all sorts of stuff. Of course, I am doing the fruitless, perdictive comparisons – My job VS their jobs. My tiny two bedroom apartment VS their house in the suburbs. All that nonsense, but more, I have just been coming back to the reality of that length of time. 20. god. damn. years. A life time.

After two decades, I don’t have a degree or a career. Don’t own a house. I am not married and I don’t even have a driver’s licence. I have about $175 dollars in my savings account. So by a lot of standards, I am a pretty pitiful adult, but the fact that I have spent the last 20 years without all that does’t bother me all to much. I have a lovely home. I’ve the good fortune to be surrounded by the most staggeringly brilliant friends a girl could hope for. I managed to land a sweet, talented, inhumanly patient boyfriend. One who has generously offered to father my offspring AND gives me frequent back rubs. Oh and for a brief few years in my mid 30s, I was genuinely and terrifically happy. That ruled. Mostly, I have been pretty lucky.

So generally speaking, I don’t regret all of the choices, failures, and small successes that got me were I am today. I don’t even truly regret not having started to try to have a family any sooner. I am not ready now. I sure as shit was not ready in my 20s or early 30s. So why am I so unsettled by the fact that 20 years has passed? Yeah, I am getting older, but so is everyone else. What can’t I put my finger on? It’s definitely related to womanhood and age and this crazy journey I have been on these past 15 months…

I guess it just boggles my mind that I had, that any human woman has, more then 20 years to procreate. My jaw wants to drop every time I think about that. What a long lived species we are! I could have had 10 kids by now or one that was old enough to drink. In some insane, but plausible alternative reality, I could be a grandmother by now. 20 years is a long time… And it went by in the blink of an eye. It feels really off that I am so close to the end of the reproductive stage of my life, yet I still feel so fucking young, so inexperienced, but also so expectant. I have barely gotten started being an adult and yet my chances of becoming a biological parent are almost gone. So when was my adult life supposed to start? I guess deep down, I thought it would start when I became a mom. Oops.

Also, am I middled aged yet? When does that happen?

Ok. Enough random rambling. I am not going to my reunion.