text: 21? Twenty-one sounds like an overrated number. I should probably explain that better; I’m twenty and only four weeks away from being twenty-one. I don’t know why this impending birthday is my first mid-life crisis birthday. Most people get excited to hit the bars and welcome the most exciting years of their lives? Maybe it’s because I have a lot of friends in their twenties who are already tired of the bars and $8 beers when that money could be spent on better things? Or maybe it’s the awful commute from the “up and coming,” real-estate lingo for overpriced and out of the way, neighborhood. You know the ones that have the “great coffeehouse culture”, also known as generic hipster remix of Dunkin and latte art. Life gets busier, work gets harder, people grow farther apart and there is no such thing as spring break, or summer break, or syllabus week!!! Then again, why should I be worried. There are plenty of stories that are going well. My friend hit it big with some Wall St. firm, and now he’s got a great place in Brooklyn and went backpacking in south America for 8 days. I’ve done my homework. I should be in a good place. I should be free from the worry that “I’m not going anywhere”, and into that place of “I’ve got myself in the right position to be in an amazing place tomorrow.” That relentless optimism that comes with youth. There never seems to be a middle ground in the twenties. It’s either the best time or the worst time. Hopefully, I’m on the right side of this fork? Of course, I haven’t tackled the biggest source of angst for most twenty-one year old’s. The highly anticipated access to the bae4life app. I know the algorithm is said to be perfect. The AI’s comprehensive interview analyzes every aspect of who you are to find your perfect match for life. Sometimes, I feel like an old man. I just cannot fathom how a five-hour facetime conversation with an AI and its advanced neural network developed from over a hundred years of match making has yielded an app that will not only give someone a match and that match is the perfect match. Things have happened to my friends who matched with this much touted “one.” Sure, people say love’s one hell of a drug, but I still can’t fathom how Dereck went from being constantly high on some drug or another since he was fifteen to meeting his match and getting clean by himself. Hell, his girl’s got him convinced he should go to college. Flash forward to a year later, and this stupid shit ended up in Harvard. Ironically enough, Emily who hasn’t so much as sipped on a beer or spoken any second language got matched to some Thai drug lord last week. They hit it off so well on their first date that she decided she wanted to stay in Thailand. People hadn’t even know what happened to her until she sent everyone gold-plated wedding invites. I know you probably think I’m crazy for thinking the best part of turning twenty-one is the part that worries me so much. People have used the app for generations now. It seems like when they meet their bae4life match they find that part of their soul that was missing for twenty-one years. It’s been found in some of the most unlikely places as well as the most mundane of places. There are the normal ones out there like Mike and Ashley who have been dating since middle school. They lived across the street from each other since the 2nd grade. Who was surprised when they matched with each other! Of course, anything sounds better than going back to the old days. My triple great grandpa loves to tell the agonizing stories of all his failed marriages. The disgusting divorces he went through until the app got developed and turned his life around. Ugh, I’m not really sure how to explain divorce. Essentially, it’s when you are older than 21 and you break up with someone. I know crazy right? Back in the 2000s every other marriage used to end up in divorce. Since the app Bae4life started no ones had a divorce in three hundred years. I guess the reason I’m worried is because all these people really thought they knew themselves, but what they thought wanted turned out to be so far from reality. I could just picture myself being matched with some psychotic, roid raged, and half deranged stranger. Surprise, your best complement for life is a complete nut job because you are one too. If I’m being honest with myself, that would probably be the favorable outcome. At least there’s someone else on the match screen. Someone is always better than no one. I don’t know why, but some sixth sense tells me the app won’t work for me. It’s like I am wired different from everyone else. Almost as if I’m not a human, and the algorithm’s going to break when I use it because it has never had to match a non-human. Could I just be another angsty young twenty something? I hope I am, but something tells me the radiation my pregnant mom endured during her deployment in the fifth moon wars did something more than just give my skin it’s signature bluish glow. Two weeks to go, and I can’t help but wonder if now, might be the appropriate time to hit the panic button on life. My roommates think I am being melodramatic again. I have a hard time believing that I’m the one being histrionic. I can’t understand why everyone wants to keep taking me out to party. Everyone says they are doing it so I can enjoy the last days of the “single-life,”. It really just seems like everyone wants an excuse to party. Last I checked the single life consisted of sad hot pockets and sadder Netflix shows about the moon wars. Is it weird that I worry about future worries? I’m worried that I’ll wake up the morning of my twenty-first and complete the interview only to find that I’ll have the most anxiety filled time of my life until I get my match. It isn’t an instantaneous match because there may not be someone in the world at that moment that clicks with you. The wait to match can take weeks and knowing me every second I don’t get a match is a second of agony. One day to go...I had the weirdest conversation last night. My mom basically asked me if I had ever considered setting my location preferences for the moon colonies. I don’t understand why she would want me to match with a second-class interplanetary colony citizen.