Thank you How I Met Your Mother

When I was younger I visioned myself in the fairy tale relationship. I had assumed I would find 'the one' in high school or in college and we'd acquire this mass of pictures to show off at our wedding of us at numerous dances, and we'd have crazy stories to tell our children of all the shenanigans we pulled. I guess what I never thought of though was the way my life has truly panned out.
I know I'm not old by any means, but I'm getting older with every year. I'm at the point in my life where I've passed some of the monumental possibilities that I had imagined with my future husband, like pictures from prom. I'll never attend another prom in my life, and seeing as I went solo to both of mine, there will never be those embarrassing pictures to show at the wedding of my husband and I at our prom together.
But the more I think about it now, the more I realize how unrealistic that vision was. The likelihood of marrying your high school sweetheart is minimal, especially if you're like me and didn't have a high school sweetheart to potentially marry at all. I picture my future, and rather than seeing some faceless man and I getting engaged before college is over and having children by the time I'm 23 (like the 10-year old me thought), I see endless possibilities with my life. I see myself studying abroad, moving anywhere I want to, living in crappy 1 bedroom apartments being a teacher in the middle of who cares. And somewhere down the road, as I'm living my life the way that makes me happiest, there might be a man who fits into my life perfectly. I mean, I was being so unfair to myself before, thinking that I should miss out on opportunities just to be with someone who may or may not exist instead of just living my life and leaving the rest of it to fate.
I guess my point of this whole jumbled mess of thoughts is a reminder to myself that not everything has to happen tomorrow, or next month, or even next year. And maybe the reason I haven't found what I'm looking for is because of that: I'm looking for it. If it's not suppose to happen yet there's nothing I can do to speed along the process except wait for things to progress as they need to, and just enjoy the ride.