A friend of mine recently posed a question to me that I found somewhat interesting. “When you were 16, is this how you imagined your life would be?” Obviously my response to this was a big hell the eff no. Then again what did I know at 16.. or what does any 16 year old really know? Most live in this sheltered “reality” of hopes and dreams. I am sure that for some these things happen or they follow through, but for most.. what you want or think you want at 16.. it’s fleeting. Things get in the way. Life happens. You start to see the world for how it really is.
Delving deeper into this conversation with my friend, she points out that if she could go back and change things, she would. This statement really took my aback. I didn’t quite know how to respond, except for with.. why? Why would anyone do that? Anyone who knows me, really knows me.. knows that I have been through shit. I have been to hell and back in the last three years. I went from being all happy in a little family I created to breaking up that family, to ever so slowly hitting far below rock bottom. I lost a baby, I lost friends, I lost myself.. my heart.. my soul.. my passion. I was a stranger, just here for the show basically. I had this hole, I kept digging and digging and digging.. making one poor choice after another.. taking the hits of bad luck/karma one right after the other. I didn’t even recognize myself anymore.. I’d look in the mirror and the person looking back was so sad and empty. I have had to spend 2 of the last 3 years digging back out. Finding myself, my place.. that passion. I never want to go back, and I don’t like thinking about what I’ve been through or the places I have gone to.. but I would never ever change it. Not one incident, not one conversation, not one heartache, not the miscarriage.. none of it.
I am becoming a firm believer in that old adage that goes “everything happens for a reason.” There is a reason, my life is not the way I envisioned it at 16, not by a long shot. I could complain and cry about the bad things I’ve been through, but I choose now, maybe not before.. but I choose now to embrace those moments. It was in those moments I discovered me. It was in those moments I discovered my strength as mother, as a person, as a friend. These last 3 years, saved my life. I still have a ways to go, I mean.. I still don’t know what I want to be when I grow up.. and I am no where close to where I want my relationship with my daughter to be.. but I’m getting there. Things are coming together. I may lose perspective every once in a while and see things slightly skewed, but in the end.. I am exactly where I am supposed to be.. for right now. Right now, in this moment.
