I used to say things like, “I don’t regret anything” and ruled my life with a sense of carefree energy, seemingly unshakeable from the seriousness of life.
Every choice was deliberate and carried a conviction that could get me through uncertainty.
I stood very tall in my choices. The choice not to finish high school. The choice to enter the workforce at a young age. The choices I made to get into several serious relationships very early in life.
It is hard to look back at the last fifteen years, and not harbor some level of regret.
And it is easy to pass the blame to my parents who were supposed to guide me and protect me from the cruelty of the world.
In some capacity, I feel like I sold myself a lie. I do not blame others for the way I have chosen to live my life. I thought I was on a straight and narrow path. I watched as my friends went onto college, party, and become a part of something bigger. I watched them get careers, meet the love of their lives and start families.
Somewhere along the way my honesty and integrity became the very thing I was trying to avoid: A prison.
It wasn’t that the integrity was the prison itself.
But, it imprisoned me because it kept me trapped inside of relationships that were fundamentally unhealthy. I wholeheartedly believed that if I just loved harder, stayed longer, remained true to my values then I could save these relationships.
My father told me at a young age I would end up barefoot and pregnant, and growing up I was consistently put in boxes I didn’t want to be in. My worth reduced my sexual value. My bosses, my friends, my lovers. Through abuse, assault, neglect and all of the fight I have done, I feel as though I have nothing to offer another person.
And it’s cruelly ironic, because, at the end of the day I sometimes feel my father was right. I would end up barefoot (homeless) the only thing that is missing, is a child. Something I want more now than ever and the walls close in a little tighter each day. The realization that, I may not ever become a mother.
There is a very particular sadness and grief that comes with looking back at my younger self, determined not to fall victim to my father’s words; One that begs the question – Do we have any control of our destiny at all? And the grief of preferring to have become pregnant at a young age, at least I would have left with the universe’s most beautiful of blessings. At least I would have walked away with a sense of fullfilment, and maybe something a little more tangible.
It isn’t the sadness of wasted time, I wasn’t simplt just passing time.
I was actively investing.
All of these scars.
All of the blood, sweat and tears.
The begging and pleading with the universe.
The countless times I pulled myself up by the bootstraps.
It isn’t just grief. It’s the looping of grief that questions, if I had the support at the time to distinguish when to throw in the towel, would my life look differently or would I still have made the same choices?
I think the sadness I feel in that, is that I will never have an answer to that question.
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