What's the "right life" for you?

"Oh, you're 26? Well, you look just old enough to be 18! You're really such a baby... So, are you married? No? Oh..." [followed by a face mixed with sympathy, pity, and just the slightest bit of judgement - or maybe not so slight...]

What's with that? How can I be just a baby, and yet should be married, have a house, and be working on the 2.5 kids? Recently this topic has come up a lot in my life, and the lives of my twenty-something (or older) friends. And then I'm sitting in a doctor's office, pick up the current Time magazine and find this essay (timing is so weird sometimes): The Bachelorette Who Set Us Free

Personally I do not get bombarded with the latter comments and facial expressions, as I am married. But that doesn't mean that I think it's ok, or that I'm not completely disgusted by it. From my own perspective, being a twenty-something who is married, have a house (well, a townhouse) and is contemplating the baby thing... it still sucks. I don't want to be the "one who did it right". Who said that? Certainly not me. If someone asked me 5 years ago where I'd be today, I never would have guessed I'd be here. And by being compared to me as the "one who did it right", that means that I am only valuable because of the fact that I'm married? What about the other accomplishments in my life? The fact that I went back to school? What about being an intelligent, hardworking, honest, caring, empathetic, loving woman?

Certainly, this is NOT to say that I don't appreciate what I have. I truly feel blessed to be as fortunate as I am to find my husband as early as I did... but what's with the judgement if that hasn't happened? I could very well be like many of my friends, and be a single twenty-something now. Would that make me less of a person?

Who are we to judge someone who isn't married? That we somehow know what the "right life" is for everyone else? Personally, I would never give myself that much credit!

People make comments about what "Sex and the City" has done for single women. While I don't doubt that it is better than it used to be, I think if you talk to a lot of single females now, they might tell you that there's much more to be done.