Hindsight

Several years ago, on a show I was watching, I heard this quote addressed to someone in despair: "You're too young to not believe." At the time, it filled me with a sense of hope, a realization that life goes on, and a deeper appreciation of perspective. I still remember, years later, my younger self thinking about that quote and adding it to my metaphorical list of lessons learned. I'm not sure what made me remember it today, but here I am, thinking about it, trying to make sense of how much the meaning has changed over the past several years.

And I wish that I could believe that it was true, but I don't. I've been through too much, I've seen too much. I have experienced things and worried about things that nobody at my age should have ever had to have thought about. I shouldn't complain though. I put myself through everything that got me to the situation I'm in now, it's all based on the decisions I made in the past. But I'll throw this out as advice to anybody who is in the same situation that I was: don't. Just don't. Spare yourself the mistake. I don't regret any of it, but none of it should have happened, either. And because of that, I now live with the burden of consequences on my back every single day.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: we are responsible for all of our actions and decisions, they follow us for the rest of our lives. It may be something seemingly forgotten, but even now, a decision that I made six months ago today still haunts me, the words I said that finalized the choice still ring in my ears. I could blame it on the environment of the modern world, the expectations, the things we see in the media that influence our decisions...but I can't really do that because influences are influences, but the choice ultimately rested in my hands, and I made it. I made a mistake. Actually, I made many mistakes then, and I'm willing to flat out admit it. So did those around me, but I'm not accountable for them, I'm only accountable for myself and the consequences of my own decisions.

What's done is done. You can't undo the things you've done, and I've most certainly come to understand that in the past six months when it really began to hit me. Perhaps no less ironic, people I've talked to have said (and I still say it myself sometimes, but I try to watch it more now) that they want to do stupid things, make stupid decisions, have the experiences. And I sit and listen, and think about the mistakes that I've made and wonder if, given the chance, I wouldn't make them again, exactly the same way. But I doubt it, and I've already changed that in my life. I could have made even more mistakes in the past several months that I didn't let myself make because of the experiences I'd had in the past. Life may be more interesting if I had allowed myself to make those given decisions, but I'm glad I haven't, because I know now, I really know that it would have just gone downhill like it did in the past.

As cliche as it is, be careful what you wish for. You never know where it will lead you or how it will all end. And some experiences are probably not worth the pain. Mistakes will be mistakes, all you can do is move on and learn from them, although it's infinitely easier, if less eventful, to avoid them as much as you can. But that's life...risk is fun, the consequences are not.