When your age is getting serious, but your life is not

And why it's a good thing

When my mum was 20 years old, she already had her life figured out. She was about to get married to a man she would stay with until death did them part. She was studying for a degree to enter a job she would keep until she retired. She was pregnant with her firstborn.

When I was 20 years old, I did not have my life figured out. I was in a relationship with a man I would break up with two years later. I was studying for a degree, hoping to never enter a big girl job. I wasn’t even close to being pregnant, but you know, someone has to perform the role of the chaotic aunt who is constantly traveling.

Sometimes, my mum tells me she doesn’t understand me but I haven’t yet figured out how to explain in a loving way that her life sounds like a prison sentence to me.

Since I was very little, I knew I wanted to live a life very different from my own upbringing. Not that there was anything particularly wrong with my upbringing, aside from the typical trauma and drama you experience in any dysfunctional family; I just knew I wanted something different for my future.

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Whenever I make a rare appearance in my hometown and bump into old classmates, which is inevitable in a village of 1,000 people, they all seem to be living the same life. They all went to college in the nearest bigger city, fell in love with someone who would look just good enough in engagement photos, and returned to their hometown after realizing life outside this 2km radius is ridiculously expensive.

My life, on the other hand, hasn’t become significantly more serious than it was 10 years ago. Although one might think that life inevitably becomes less carefree after the birth of a child, I often feel like an unsupervised child who now has to supervise a child. (My ex sometimes jokes that I’m not actually my daughter's mom but just her teenage sister, and I think that’s beautiful.)

I love my unserious life (can you tell by now?), and although I will forever have to deal with strangers asking me when I’m finally getting a real job, a real home, and a real relationship, I’d rather have it this way than get a real job just to qualify for a mortgage on a real home, only to wake up one day and find out my real husband had been cheating on me with a 10-year-younger version of myself. No thanks.

So, how do you manage to live an unserious life, despite being in the not so unserious position of being a single mum?