"You're engaged??? But you look too young to be engaged!!!" That's the comment I receive time and time again when I mention the word "fiancee" to people of older generations. I guess it could be a testament to the fact that I have my mom's genes and look more like I'm 16 than the 21 years old that I am, but even when mentioning my age I still get the same comment made. I also tend to be asked whether my parents approve, and what my friends think about my being engaged. These questions honestly baffle me the most, as to me the answers are obvious. My parents are absolutely supportive of it, as I am already older than my mom was when she got married, and my friends are excited for me and haven't doubted me once. So why bother asking? The problem is that behind these seemingly innocent questions that are thrown my way about my engagement lies something deeper and harsher.

Beneath these questions lies a sense of judgement towards my decisions in life, based on the fact that I am a young college student. Now, I tend to let things slide by, but I would just like to kindly ask anyone who has ever considered making this judgment to please stop. Yes, I am on the younger side to be getting engaged and to be thinking about getting married. Yes, I am currently in college and plan to continue to work towards a degree. Yes, I am an intelligent young woman who could do anything with the opportunities she has in life. But guess what, this is what i want in life. Among all of these things, I am also an adult who is in love and who wants to have a family in the future, along with a career and a degree, and what is so wrong with that? If I'm happy, and my fiancee is happy, and our parents approve, and we still plan to continue to focus on school then why is my age such a big deal?

I'm a firm believer in people making the choices and decisions for their life that will best suit the life that they want to live. Thus, I want people to try to understand that this is the best decision for the life that I want to live. You're aloud to not completely agree, or to know that you would never make the same decision for yourself, but, in the end, you can't change this about me. I am a 21-year-old junior undergraduate student, and I am also a young adult engaged to the love of my life. Young love might seem risky and dumb and difficult to understand, but I am here to tell you that it's just as real as the love of two older adults who just got engaged. So next time you think about asking someone a question about their own personal decision, think about this; age is just a number, and love spans no boundaries.