Yesterday at work, I met a girl my age who had just recently been engaged. At 18, it's hard for me to imagine being someone's spouse. I do, however, take my relationship very seriously, and look forward to that becoming a possibility in the future.

My boyfriend, like myself, is from Knoxville- a fact that I really dislike telling people. While it's true that his residency here provided me with the emotional support I needed to ultimately move to my favorite city, moving to Charleston and attending school here was my dream, and completely independent from his location. I believe in fate, so I just consider myself very blessed to have fallen in love with someone who just so happened to be moving here. I didn't "follow a boy to college". I followed my own dream.

People love to ask me about what I think would happen if we broke up. Actually what people love to imply is that our relationship is destined to end on the premise of "young love," and silently assume that my plans for the next few years will change. Well, I can tell you now that while I don't see that happening in the near future, I won't be moving from Charleston.I love living here, and it's become home to me.

But that's straying a bit from the point. It doesn't matter what happens in our relationship; the fact that we are young has no affect on our union. It irks me that society still hangs onto the idea that "young love" lacks authenticity. Of course, no two couples are just alike. I'm not stating that adolescents don't enter into relationships for superficial reasons, but thats the case at ANY AGE.

Although it's unfortunate to note, divorce is nothing short of commonplace in this day and age. People choose to divorce one another after 25 years or 90 days, and at any age; it doesn't make a difference really; the takeaway from such instances is that the relationship was destined to end- just like relationships between some younger individuals.

While some may argue that compatibility is rooted in maturity, I would counter that we are always maturing. We are always learning or experiencing new things. Changing.

Shortly after the aforementioned girl left the store, another woman came in, and told my coworkers and I about how she met her now husband in the ninth grade. She's 27 now. Love knows no age. And if it did, it doesn't matter. Some things are meant to end, and some things are meant to last.