22

So today, I expired. I hit the dreaded age of 22 without a husband, boyfriend, or even prospects.

To anyone who's not Mormon, and even to some of my Mormon peers, this seems utterly ridiculous. I'm far from being old and hardly an old maid. And in reality, they're right. But as far as perceptions go, I'm expired.

It comes from the previous generations. Up until the 1970's, good Mormon girls went to BYU, got married within the first two years and then dropped out of school to have babies. By the 80's good Mormon girls still got married in the first two years, but it was acceptable to wait till you had a degree to have babies. Today, you have all four years of college to find a husband and maybe will even work a few years before having babies! But leave college without a man...

Once again it's mostly perceptions. Plenty of girls graduate and start careers before successfully landing the man of their dreams. They didn't actually expire. But the perception's still there and my friends will admit, in whispers, the growing fear that they're own expiration date is coming. Men will always want to marry younger, and freshly returned missionary boys will always want to marry 19 year old (mostly cause their well adjusted 21 year old peers won't have them). Meanwhile I've noticed that the adults at church back home have stopped asking me about boys and if I'm dating and have started asking me about what I plan to do after college and, most excitedly, am I planning on going on a mission?! Cause they know what I know. I've expired.

So in these past years in which I wasted my youth, what was I doing if not catching a man? Hmm, I was being highly successful at an actually prestigious, non-church owned university, which I'll be graduating from, with honors, in May. I was an NCAA division one athlete and have the letter jacket to prove it. I have become more accomplished in my work than I could have dreamed of four years ago. And I have shaped an idea of what I want to accomplish and the woman I want to be in this world.

I would have willingly become the young bride and young housewife. Honestly, I still would. But I'm also fine with expiring. There’s so much I would have missed if I was married at 20. There's so much I will miss if I got married today. So now I'll have to face the world, and dating, as one of the scariest incarnations imaginable: a college educated, smart, ambitious, independent woman. But I think I'm ready for it.

Ready for life after expiration.