Myselves

It's difficult at times to see the connection between myself and my younger self. The things that I did, the thoughts that I thought, the ways I thought of right and wrong, what I thought was right and wrong, all are often detached, as though I'm remembering someone else's memories, or attempting to remember something that I was only told about rather than something I lived. I suppose we change, we essentially become different people, we transform into another person when we no longer hold the same views, have the same tastes, or behave in the same fashion. Yet when I think of the emotions behind my actions and thoughts, I realize that I witness those same emotions daily even still. Perhaps I don't have the same insecurities, but I still have insecurity. Maybe I don't worry about the same things, but I still have problems with anxiety. Emotion is the connection to the past. Emotion holds our memories in place. Emotion ties us to our former selves, those people we used to be. We're ultimately always the same person. Time can make our memories fade and our own experiences seem foreign. The way we feel about those memories may change; the way we deal with new experiences may change. But we still have the same basic emotions we've always had, which allows us to feel our memories even when we can't relate to them anymore.

Cyclical

Snow covers the ground, the back porch, the picnic table. There's not enough to be described as that beautiful white blanket, covering up the world's impurities, as it is so often considered. I can still see the dirt through the snow. I can still see the muddy December-in-Ohio ground lurking underneath. I wish there was more snow to fulfill this desire I have to have a "really bad winter" just one year, to have a winter that even meets the description of what I grew up calling winter in Ohio, with days where my dad couldn't go to work because the roads were so bad; days where the snow piled so high I would jump from the little maple tree in the front yard of my childhood home into piles of snow deep enough I could almost pretend to not feel the hard ground beneath my young body; days where the trees were so covered in ice they looked as though they were merely ice sculpted to look like trees that I referred to simply as "ice trees," taking pictures of them the very first chance I got with my new cell phone at the age of 14. I miss those winter days in Ohio. The snow I see now leaves me with a bittersweet feeling, reminding me of childhood memories, only to sadden at them because I miss those days.

It makes me think of an unrequited love, when someone makes you so happy just by being around because you love them; but their presence only ultimately serves to make you sad because the love you feel toward them is not reciprocated toward you. You could pour yourself out for them, give all of yourself, but never see anything in return. It is draining, mentally exhausting. Just like when my imagination runs away from me. I imagine myself moving to another state, Michigan, of all places, and partially for the snow, driving all of our things there next year in a big moving truck. Coincidentally, it would be from Uhaul with fun facts about Ohio, however unlikely, which would merely remind me of what I was leaving behind, denying me any opportunity of looking forward. But perhaps I already look forward too much.

I am consistently thinking of the future, never my present. If I'm not thinking of moving, I'm thinking of my upcoming wedding, but not in the productive way where I get everything ready for it and feel prepared. More like in a way where I just imagine it playing out perfectly. I imagine our honeymoon. I imagine our first dance, slowly dancing to some yet unknown song. But it will all be perfect, even if I never work to make it that way. The cake will be perfect, even though I don't know who will make it. I can already envision it.

And if I'm not dwelling on the future, I'm dwelling on the past. I'm thinking about things I wish I could change. I'm thinking about things I would never change, reliving memories, like when I first met my fiancee. I remember seeing him for the first time and not allowing myself to find him attractive because I had just entered a relationship with someone else. I remember eating lunch with him thinking he dressed nice and cussed a lot. I remember after the other guy broke up with me being terrified to talk to my now fiancee because of how attracted I was to him and how I wouldn't add him on facebook until we no longer worked the same job and I wouldn't have to see him anymore.

I might as well be thinking of myself on a rocket ship. When I imagine the future, it's like me thinking I'm going to the moon. I don't know if I'll move, and I certainly don't know that nothing will go wrong at my wedding, because it probably will. But thinking of my fiancee and the chances of meeting  him at the perfect time, and beginning our relationship at the perfect time five months later, it reminds me that the uncertainties in life are worth it, because even though I don't know that I'll ever see another "Ohio winter" or that I'll ever go to the moon, I already know that I met the most amazing man alive and that space travel is possible.

Challenge

I can see myself doing so many things. Becoming an editor. Getting published. Becoming a college professor, even. But it’s really not me that I see doing those things. It’s some future version of myself, some far off future me who eventually gets to do everything she wants to do and who has the courage and confidence to do them without question. But the truth of the matter is, that person doesn’t exist. Sure, people change. But all that bullshit about being different people throughout our lives, I don’t believe that. Yes, I am different than who I was five years ago. But I’m not so fundamentally different that I’m a different person entirely. I may not have quite as many quirky attributes, and I don’t post as many selfies or stupid posts on social media as I used to, but deep down, I’m the same girl who nearly had a panic attack every first class in college all the way up until her senior year. I have the same fears, the same insecurities, the same anxieties, and to be honest, some of them have only gotten worse with time. Maybe I wasn’t nervous about first classes anymore by the time I got to my senior year, but look how many classes it took me to get to that point. The characteristic behind that scenario is my fear of new situations, and that fear is still alive and kicking. I don’t see me doing the things I want because I lack the courage to do them. All I can see the present me doing is working at a dead end job that takes the happiness out of my life, detracts enormously from my social and family life by forcing me to work evenings, and adds stress to the most important relationship in my life, the relationship with my fiancée, because I feel like I’m never around and never have time to even plan our wedding. That’s the only place I can see myself as I am now. So instead, I picture myself fulfilling my dreams somewhere down the road in the future when I have the courage to fulfill them. But in reality, I will never have the courage. I will never have the courage to walk into my first real job interview with the confidence that I can get that job no problem. I will never have the courage to spend my first day at my first editing job self-assured that I made the right choice, that my new employer made the right choice, and that I can absolutely do the job I have just begun. I will never have the courage to walk into a classroom of college students, of any students, for the first time and know that I am in the right place and that I can get through the day, let alone the semester or school year, without screwing things up. That’s not who I am. That’s not who I ever will be as far as I know. I still have my anxiety, and I still am wary of new situations; in fact, I’m terrified of them. Which is why I have to just do it anyway. I have to apply to that job. I have to go to that interview. I have to suffer through my first day or week or month of that  job, whatever it takes for me to become comfortable. I have to get the education I need to be that professor, if that’s what I decide I want. And I have to walk into that classroom despite the part of me that wants to run away screaming in terror merely at the thought of having to talk to more than one person at a time. I can’t wait around for me to become someone who can do what I want to do with my life, because I will never be that person in the future if I’m not her right now. I may not have the ability to not be nervous or scared of change, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have the ability to pursue my goals. It just makes it more of a challenge along the way.

Young Bride

Sometimes I see my friends who are younger than me getting married, and I'm jealous. Or I see my friends my age who've been married years and have kids. I'm sad. It bothers me. I start wishing I'd had that. The chance to begin that stage of my life that early. I'll wish that I'd met my boyfriend sooner and that we'd gotten married two and a half years ago, and I think how great things would be now. I plan it all out in my head, something that never can happen because that opportunity is already gone. And it makes me sad.

Then I think of all the times my life has gone exactly as I planned for it to. Which is to say, I realize that it never has. I can't know what will happen in the future, and I can't know what would have happened in the past had things been different, or even how things would be now.

I realize that I feel as though we've wasted time, as though the years we didn't spend together have somehow been wasted because we never can live them together.
But those years have made us who we are. Those years have given us the ability to be happy together, something I don't know we would have had if we'd been together sooner. The experiences we each lived in the time before we met are why we love each other the way we do now, and it would be difficult for me to say I wish I could change that. There are certainly things I regret and things that bother me from both of our pasts, but I can't say I wish that to avoid it we'd been together the whole time, that we'd married when I was eighteen or nineteen and that we had three kids by now. I want a family, but I want that when we're ready for one.

I want to marry soon, in the year I'm twenty two, which isn't as old of an age as I sometimes think it is. I don't want to wait for another five years, or anything of the sort. But I'm glad we're in the position we are today. Because if we weren't in this position, we may not have ever gotten married at all. I'm glad that I don't marry at eighteen because I wasn't the person I am today, and I'm glad that it is the person I am today who will be marrying the person my boyfriend is today.