I’ve been getting into poetry lately and started reading a random poetry collection I picked up from a used bookstore this month. I like to flip to a random page and read one every now and then, and one recent morning I flipped to a Robert Browning poem about marriage. Ms. Universe, are you trying to tell me something, girl?

A few days before this, I learned of a friend of mine my age announcing her marriage and the baby she’s carrying. And then it all came crashing down. These past few years, the timeline around me has been slowly scattered with an increasing number of engagements and eventual marriages. The pregnancy part is a bit more rare, but happens inevitably.

I’ve even seen people my age of 22 buying houses with their significant other like it’s nothing. They make it seem like a casual consequential step in their relationship, like I would plan for my graduation. I’m over here “focusing on my career” and worrying about all that other stuff later. Husband, who? Money, where? Career, how?

Sure, I played piano at a wedding when I was eight — regretfully messing up a chord while the bride walked down the aisle — but I’ve only been to one other wedding in my life. 

I’ve gotten to that point where I could be cast in a romantic comedy as the girl who “hates weddings” but gets invited to 10 a year and is reminded that love awaits her. But she’s a tortured soul and thinks the whole “marrriage” thing is stupid. 

I feel a little tricked. I was over here thinking that no one my age got married. I thought we, as a generation, agreed on the fact that we wouldn’t get married until we found a stable career, focusing on our dreams and careers now while saving marriage and family for what lies next. I mean, this isn’t the 1950s. I thought we were fighting the patriarchy.

Yet, here I am witnessing more marriage proposals on my social media timeline than I could have mentally prepared myself for. But given my youth, that number of engagements will inevitably increase over time. 

Do I want to be like forever bridesmaid Jane from “27 Dresses” or the jaded Fiona from “Four Weddings and a Funeral?” Perhaps the former, because in the end I would marry James Marsden, but that’s besides the point. 

I don't want to live my life running from cliches and stereotypes I blame movies for, just because an Instagram post freaked me out. I’ve come across this my whole life: friends posting college acceptances as I awaited mine, comparing SAT scores or feeling inferior to people with double majors and minors and clusters and whatever else you can add on to your transcript. There’s always going to be things in life that make me feel like I’m not moving fast enough or doing the right thing, but everyone’s lives move at their own pace.

At the end of all of this panic, at the very least, I better be invited to the reception.