I'm Twenty-Nine, and I'm Getting Anxious

With a domineering mother and a timid father, an overachieving older sister and a top-student younger brother, I grew up wedged between them all and developed my own survival strategy: keep a low profile. Don’t stand out, don’t have opinions, don’t make trouble… Never fall in love while I’m still in school, never stay single once I’m ready to date, and make sure I’m married before thirty. That was my plan for a perfect life. But with a year to go before I turned thirty, I lost my job and got dumped… Just when I thought things couldn’t get any worse, I found out they could. After all my values had been turned upside down, I thought, “To hell with your perfect life!” I’m not perfect, so what?