I do, just not today.

I'm finding that a lot of people I know are getting married around my age. Am I missing something here?

I'm barely 23 years old and I am in my first SERIOUS relationship. I've dated a lot of other guys. I dated one for four years off and on and whenever I think about it, I wish I hadn't wasted so much of my time with him.

The truth is that, at some point Ian and I probably have seen each other on a bus or would have met eventually. I've spent a lot of time in the area he lives in and our high schools were very close to each other. We don't have any mutual friends because Ian is a hermit crab and I kind of am too. The only way you will get me to go out, especially during the summer, is if I'm going somewhere I've never been before but always wanted to go to OR if you are my friend and you beg and plead with me to brave it through the heat and crowds.

We're a good match. We don't like being around a ton of people...Except I comment publicly about my disdain for tourists and the obnoxious while he laughs and tells me to be quiet. I think he worries that one day I'll get punched in the face by an angry homeless person or a snobby rich woman who feels the need to walk at the speed of an elephant in her Manolo Blahniks.

He's always asking me about the length of our relationship.

Yes, I would like to be married some day to Ian. Just not today. When I say not today, I mean that I don't want to be living with him, unemployed and in school while he's working a full-time job that he hates.

Engaged, sure. Married, no. If you're engaged, you pretty much have as much time as you want to figure out your life, your finances, where you live (if it's an appropriate area to start a family). I want to say that "We have all the time in the world" but I don't know if that's necessarily true.

I haven't checked my blood sugar in almost a year - I'm diabetic.

I haven't gone to my doctor in OVER a year - I have other health problems.

I stopped seeing my doctor because I'd go every three months and he always had the same thing to say to me "keep managing your weight the way you are," "keep those blood levels the same," and "great job. see you in three months."

:| I know that I probably will never be able to give birth, given my situation. And the truth is that I don't want to but I would like to have children. I just don't think it'd be wise in my health conditions to give birth to a child.

I love Ian and I want to grow old with him and yell at our kids together when they misbehave in a grocery or retail store but I don't know if that's what God has planned for me.