A Series of Observations

What title would you give this chapter in your life?

The title of the current chapter of my life would be, “What She Did While She Could Not.”

It would depict me doing all the things I do in life now, while I am not doing any of the things I really want to do in life.

Life has a lot of responsibilities, and for that I will never make an excuse, but that certainly does not mean that my life looks at all like how I thought it would. It also doesn’t mean that I am lost in that feeling, but rather in a period of transition.

When I was young, I genuinely used to believe that I would be married and having children by the age of 25. I thought I would have everything figured out, a family and an amazingly successful life, though I did not yet know how.

Now, I am 25 and not even close to marriage, working a job that I know is not what I want to do my entire life. I have zero children (not mad about that one), and I am not as established in my career as my young self thought I’d be, or my current self would hope to be.

Yet the younger version of myself had no idea the people that I would meet that would change the tragectory of my life. She had no idea how many countries I would have the chance to visit or the ways I would grow and change. She had no idea how much my life would open up to allow me to do a million different things, things I would never be able to do if the life she thought we would have came true.

So each day I do the things I must, while balancing the things I want, and on most days the former wins. Working, keeping my body strong and healthy, running errands, maintaining relationships, doing laundry, all while continuing to pursue my dream life after working hours is a full time job in itself. I think this is a dynamic we are all very familiar with.

I would hate for this commentary to have such a negative connotation to it though. My life is not worse off because the life I know I will have is not here yet. I’d like to think that the chapter would be filled of romanticized glimpses of my day. My time with friends, the times I get to genuinely enjoy being alone, those silly daily errands and the meals I eat. I want to remember the way my bedroom looks because I don’t get to live in my childhood bedroom anymore, and someday I will have to leave my childhood home. I want to remember my family at the dinner table, because someday I won’t get to eat every meal with them. I want to remember each child I get the chance to play with, because someday they won’t be children anymore, and I want to remember the older faces of those that I love, because someday they won’t be here anymore.

I hope that it would be a chapter that I can look back on and feel comfort, maybe even some nostalgia for. I know the life I dream of will come true in some form or another, but I refuse to let any chapter of my story become dull, no matter how simple it is.

Afterall, every moment big or small contributes to the plot, does it not?