I find that I am regularly being told to live in the present or focus on the future and just let go of the past. My problem is that I tend to hold on too tight. Honestly if it were so easy I would be doing it already, just walk away from the past and move forward. I want to believe that I have no regrets. I think we all tell ourselves that so we can justify our current situation. For the most part I think it is true, we tend to live with few regrets. When we sit and breakdown those big life changing moments and sometimes the small less meaningful ones we start to rip apart at the people we have become.
I never had any intention of being almost 25 and living where I do. I look back at these old journals that I wrote and I write about two major topics, 1) Boys, 2) Getting the hell out of here. I started writing in journals when I was in the seventh grade. So yea, when I was about 12 all I wanted to do was make it possible for me to leave. Not just leave but get as far away as possible and hopefully never come back. I was really dramatic. I could not stand living in the dream sucking place. I honestly believe is this is where dreams come to die. Remember I currently live here so no offense to those of you who also happen to live here. At a young age I could see people here had a certain attitude and closed-mindedness that I just could not imagine subjecting myself to for the rest of my life.
The only out I saw was to do well in school and escape. In my journals, other than boys, all I wrote about was my plans and goals for surviving long enough to escape. I love my parents, but when they imagined we graduating high school and going to college, they imagined me staying close to home. I felt like that was a trap. I would never get to experience anything if I never left and college felt like the perfect opportunity. I meticulously wrote down all of my goals, and I intended on following through on them.
So, I didn't exactly follow through...I decided to fit in some fun with the hard work. I took all the right classes , minus those crazy math classes, but I tried. I had moments when I could not see through the haze of why I was doing this. The mantra was, one day it will all be worth it. One day. One Day. I stumbled, especially when I got distracted, by certain distractions, but I made it.
So one day I opened my mailbox and I received my acceptance letter to my dream college and a few others to state schools, that I considered backup schools. It was my ticket to get 2000 miles away from home. A home that never really felt like home. I never really felt as though I belonged here. Of course if you've read other posts you know that a couple weeks prior to receiving the Golden Ticket, I was involved in a traumatic , tragic car accident. So, I never went. I deferred one semester with the intention of leaving, but I chickened out and was destined to stay in the land where dreams come to die.
Only when I look back and think about changing that specific moment, I don't think I would change it. Check back for the breakdown on how different my life would have turned out had made a different decision. It is interesting, at least to me.
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