Losing The Teen. Adding the Twenty

Live as long as you may, the first twenty years are the longest half of your life.                                                                              […]

Decisions

I have heard people say that the most important decisions in life will be the easiest ones to make, because you will know. There will be a gut feeling deep down somewhere that is like a sixth sense of survival. Well, someone please tell me how to kick it in to gear because I think I was born without it. See, I’m in the process of a decision, a step in one direction or the other, and I’m lost. I was talking out the pros and cons out with my best friend and she asked me-

“Are you only waiting for someone to tell you that what you choose is going to be okay? Is that what you are waiting for?”

Sometimes there isn’t always going to be a right but is it true that in every decision there is always going to be an aspect of wrong. Everything that we do is a decision. Every moment we are risking some part of ourselves in our choices. When it comes to decisions, I talk them out, I listen to the experiences of others, and it takes the contemplation of every pro and con to decide. I am not an instinctual person, I am a logistic “live as if you have years to decide” type of person. So when talking out decisions most of my friends tell me I will know, I feel hesitant in believing them. I should respect and think my decision through but to know is to have complete confidence in every variable of the decision. Things change, people change, life changes. Decisions effect the changes of life,  and decisions can hurt, and they can love and they in the end may be everything you ever wanted or nothing at all. But for someone to tell me that I will know, that this life changing decision will be easy. Will feel right. Will kick in my sixth sense. Will it? Think of people on their wedding day, everyone has their doubts. Life is not something written out, it is instead something we continue to write.

As I sit here I am thinking through my decisions, and it is my past decisions that scare me of this new one. I am so scared of being hurt and  then I remember: life is a lot more about the pain of learning than the reassurance of knowing. If I knew that half the shit I did would turn out exactly the way I did or did not want them to, my life would be so much different, so much easier. But I don’t. I can’t see the future, I don’t know what tomorrow will bring. I instead lie in bed for hours waiting for myself to choose what is better for myself. When I was little my mom would tell friends and family not to buy me gift-cards for my birthday, because it took me forever to decide. I would go to ToysRUs and stare at all the dolls for hours, looking at which one was prettier or softer or had cuter clothes or…the list goes on. Now that I am older, the way I make decisions has stayed the same. I wish instead that there was someone who would present me with gifts that I was stuck with. Choices I was stuck with, whether I liked them or not. But would I have loved the doll I chose just as much as the doll someone else gave me?

Would I be as happy in my choices if someone was making them for me? If when I asked my best friend what to do, I listened and agreed wholeheartedly, without a doubt if it was wrong. It is the partner that emotionally destroys us that makes us realize what we deserve. It is the cuts and bruises that teach us how to heal. And it is the wrong decisions that lead us to what we feel to be right. Maybe my choices are just reminders of the fact that I’m human. It is one of the many attributes that separate us from animals, our ability to reason. Yes, when I reason with myself I lose sleep and sanity and I run around in circles searching for answers. Yes, I feel stupid and young and naive when I’m scared of the things I have never done and the choices I have yet to make. Yes, my decisions are one of my many obstacles, but Motion City Soundtrack once sang

“What doesn’t kill us makes us who we are.”

     The best risks I can ever take are the ones that put myself at risk. I’m not saying they are always going to make me happy. They’ll probably end up making me feel like I’ve pulled the rug up from under my feet, gasping for air and searching for something steady and familiar to hold on to. But all I can ever hope is that my decisions will just teach me something that can help me later in the end, that further help me understand myself.

Regret is a choice. Acceptance is a choice. Right and wrong is our own perspective.