I'm so glad for you. I really am.
I'm thrilled that you know how to be happy. Your holiday photos are all captured in that perfect twilight, your hair is always in place or artfully dishevelled. Your wedding rings glint off the sunlight or moonlight in subtle ways that nevertheless make sure to remind the viewer that you have it figured out.
I'm happy that you found the love of your life, or at least someone who will do. You go to dinner in pairs; twos, fours and sixes. Movie dates and trips to the beach are all mini adventures with your 'best friend'. Your status messages on Facebook are all exercises in trying to work the odious words 'hubby' or 'wifey' into the conversation.
I'm proud of the fact that your hobbies are all mature and intellectual with just the right dose of Instagram-ready fun. Your sporting events and wine-tastings. Music concerts that must be reached in a caravan of newly-bought cars and enjoyed with the perfect glass of expensive brew. Just a little weed to show the world that you're still a rebel. Your plays and foreign language films, book launches and art galleries.
I'm fascinated by the way you've chosen to acknowledge all the gifts in your life by giving a little something back to those less fortunate. Animal shelters, cancer, AIDS and violence against women are all the recipients of your largesse. Your Twitter posts helpfully link your followers to the right stories and the best ways to donate. You yourself have managed to attend a charity gala, run a marathon or buy a T-shirt to support your favourite cause.
How wonderful it must be to have it all figured out by 30. How peaceful. How inducing of content sighs.
Me? Oh well. Ummm. Well, you know. I'm unhappy, obviously. I don't know how else to be. Alone. Also. Completely. Lots of dinners and holidays for one. And looking forward to a lifetime of those. Plenty of nerdy comic books and gory actions movies for me. And no philanthropy to speak of. At all.
I'm just here in my corner of the world, unfulfilled and incomplete in the world's eyes. In your eyes. I sense it in the pitiful looks I receive when I go places by myself. In the 'you go, girl' messages I receive. In the helpfully disingenuous complaints from my married friends about how lucky I am that I don't have to deal with a husband or wife who (insert adorable quirk here) and just won't listen.
As a character on a sitcom said, "I am not a successful adult". Not according to you anyway.
