When I was a teenager, I saw my twenties as a time of great ambition, a sort of preparation for all those things in my life that I was certain I wanted, a high-paying job, an expensive car and apartment. Few of those goals that I had at 18 even exist in my plans for my future.

Now I want to be anything but settled. I want to backpack through Europe, see the pyramids in Egypt or the Eiffel Tower in France, harvest grapes on a vineyard in Tuscany, engage in a passionate love affair in Brazil, drink in the scents and sounds of an open air market in India. I want a career I love even if it never makes me rich. I want love and family and the freedom to go where I want and do as I please without having to answer to my own conscience telling me to stop dreaming and figure out my life.

My parents run a continuous loop in my head, constantly reminding me how much of a mistake it was not to go into nursing or teaching. "Why did you waste your time in college," they say, "earning a degree in English?" My mom and dad, who used to be so supportive and proud of my decisions now lay on the guilt at my having "wasted" their money on a "useless" degree.

I find myself using my friends as a measuring stick for my own success, a practice that becomes a breeding ground for resentment and anger. They have found their lives, one as a teacher, another as a business woman. I still struggle to find my own piece of a world that makes so little sense to me now.

Even as I write this I realize that I am staganted only by my own fear of doing anything that requires change or uncertainty, of doing something or going somewhere on my own. I am a coward when it comes to my own life.

I have always tried to not regret anything in my life, but there is so much I wish would not have happened, so much I regret about myself and the world that I don't quite know how to change or make better. I can't seem to get out from under all of this debris that is clouding my view of the future. Someone, please, I need some words of wisdom, because frankly I've lost sight.