Life. No matter what happens or any of the circumstances, it keeps on going on. Though your world may stop, everyone else’s keeps on turning on its axis, and that’s just the way it is. All of a sudden, you’re looking back, and just wondering where all of the time has gone. Like the butterfly effect, one seemingly insignificant action or decision can completely alter the course of your entire history. Everything builds up just a little bit at a time and becomes hardly noticeable, until one day you’re looking back and wondering not only where the time has gone, but how you ended up where you did in life. It’s like when someone loses weight; it becomes difficult to see how much they are truly losing day to day, until you look back at photos from the start of their journey. Thanks to the ‘memories’ feature on social media, I am constantly reminded of the person I was 1, 5, or even 10 years ago, or even how different my life looked at the time. I definitely talk about my past often when it comes to this blog, but I can’t even believe how much I try to control the anxiety I feel when it comes to thinking about my future.
Every once in awhile, I’ll have a vaguely familiar face pop up in my “people you may know” feature, and I click on their profile page and realize it’s someone I once went to high school with. What’s even more mind boggling to me, is when I go to view their page, and see several people I once attended school with all joking and commenting and being cordial and amicable toward one another. I speak to almost no one from those days, save one person. I’d be lying if I said it didn’t feel like there was some small part of me that felt like I was missing out, but then I remember I was an entirely different person in those days, and it wouldn’t have been healthy to continue any of those relationships. Even more telling is the fact that I barely remember my college years as being more than a blip in the radar. I can recall much of my education, as I always seemed to possess this unrequited thirst for knowledge and learning, but between taking so many credits, working an insanely stressful job to support myself while in school, and a chaotic party girl attitude, my social life is such a blur, including the ‘friends’ I had.
And then boom. There I was craving a change and decided to move to North Carolina spur of the moment. And thus started the new course my life would take. First, a violent and miserable relationship, to then falling in love with the person meant for me. And now I can’t even believe it has been over 6 1/2 years together with my now husband. Even now, memories come up from the beginning of our relationship and I barely even recognize the person I was. To be fair, I was only 26, going on 27, and I still had a whole lot of growing up to do. I am completely different from even just a few short years ago, proving that change is constant and there is always a metamorphosis right around the corner. These days, I am pretty content with the way my life is ending up and have a lot more confidence in the decisions I am continuing to make. Early on when I began dating my husband, I struggled so much with the dynamic of him and having children, and thought I sucked at figuring out my place in this family. Granted, I never became an expert, but I loved being a part of everyone’s journey, even in the most subtle of ways, and wouldn’t change a single thing.
The only regret I really have is the damage I caused my body in my adolescence and youth. I really don’t mean to be exceptionally dramatic or perpetually negative, but my knee is at an all-time high when it comes to pain, swelling, and inflammation. My identity feels compromised by my current inability and lack of physical capabilities I am currently limited by. And I am consistently plagued by chronic migraines due to irreversible damage to my neck caused my unintelligently inverting on much larger people in my earlier Jiu jitsu days. If I could go back in time, these are the only things I would ever change. There are a few others I would like to possibly toy with the idea of altering, but again, I’d be too worried about the butterfly effect, and altering my course. My life’s decisions brought me to where I am at right now. And though I no longer have relationships with many people from my past, the relationships I have now are top tier. Now a days, I look back and am sometimes amazed at how time simply passes us by in the blink of an eye. Then it makes me begin to contemplate on where it will go and what paths I will venture to. I am still figuring out my identity every day, as a wife, an athlete, a hard working member of society. And I know all of this can change in the blink of an eye. An ever-changing persona and never one singular identity, but one I am thrilled to be a part of.
