Since graduating high school, I have seen fellow alumni become couples, fall in love, get engaged, marry and even divorce. One young woman I graduated with has since divorced twice and is in a third relationship as we speak.

As I get older, I start to panic at the idea that I am at the age where people will start to wonder if I’ve found the right person to settle down with, what I want to do for a career and if I want the typical 2.5 kids. My answers right now are: “Not that I know of,” “I’m not entirely sure” and “Thanks, but no thanks.”

And I’m okay with those answers, because as I’ve aged, I’ve realized that those past ages that used to seem so large and important are now fading.

When I turned 18, I became an adult and I felt like an adult. Now, as a 22-year-old, I look back and realize despite the fact that I was technically an adult, I was still in my teenage years.

Still, I often feel like a child, in a sense that I am only three years past teenagedom and am still scared of the world that awaits and the pressures I will face. Every time someone on my Facebook feed announces his or her engagement or posts wedding pictures, I internally laugh out of panic or I roll my eyes because “Hello, you’re 20, why tie yourself down now?”

However, after attempting to curb my judgmental attitude, I attempted to deconstruct all of the people I knew who were currently married. I realized that some of the people my age who were married had been with their significant other for at least four years. One such couple is now out in California and both are studying chemistry at prestigious southern California schools.

Do I believe the couple rushed into it because they are the same age as me? No. Do I believe the same girl in my class who is my same age rushed into it since she has been married and divorced twice since graduation? Yes.

And as I checked my judgmental attitude, I realized that it didn’t matter how old I was. It mattered how prepared I felt to enter into a potentially eternal legal contract. And right now — for me — I’m not ready at all to enter into marriage, let alone life after graduation. And that is completely okay. I’m not entirely set on one career choice. That’s okay, too. And I know that, beyond a shadow of a doubt, I will not be a woman who has children, and that is completely okay for me.

Once you exit high school and have a myriad of choices to make about your future, you may choose to marry and be a stay-at-home parent right away, as opposed to attending college or beginning a job. And though that may not be my own chosen path, if that is what you want, that is what you should have, and no one should shame you for that.