Thinking time

This last year has left me thinking about a lot of things. I've evaluated myself and the decisions I make a lot, and I'm starting to wonder if I like the person I can see myself slowly becoming.

One of my favourite lines from a TV programme is so simple, but so true, and when you listen to the whole quote it becomes even more mind blowing and meaningful. I've been thinking about this line a lot recently -

There are moments in your life that make you and set the course of who
you're going to be. Sometimes they're little, subtle moments. Sometimes
they're big moments you never saw coming.

For me the little moments can be anything as simple as smiling at a stranger or setting out ten minutes later than planned and miss running into a friend at uni, they are the times I've looked at my phone just as the caller hangs up, letting someone jump the queue cause you're not in the biggest of rushes or asking someone if you can jump the queue because you are in a rush.

They're the times I've held back my friends hair while she's been sick rather than letting her get it on her, the times I've let someone have their way to keep the peace, the times I've not said what I really wanted to or sugar coated something so not to upset someone else. These moments seem so innocent at first that you hardly notice them. But what happens when these little peace keepers start to control your life and result in you backing out of what you really want? What happens when the little moments add up to the big ones?

The biggest moment for me was when my boyfriend broke up with me. Although I half expected it I didn't really think it would ever happen. It broke my heart and there was nothing I could do about it. It wasn't my decision and I couldn't do anything to change it. I think what hurt the most was knowing that we both still loved each other, if he could have said 'I don't love you anymore' I would have accepted it, it would have still hurt but I would have known that that was it. But knowing that there were still feelings there on both sides cut me a thousand times deeper than the initial cut of breaking up.

I was a mess. For a long time I was a mess.

I tried to find ways out of the pain by rebelling from the person I'd always known me to be. To me sex had always been a special thing, something you experienced with someone you loved, only when you loved them. It was to be enjoyed but it was to mean something too. Within a matter of days I lost my whole belief system.

I couldn't feel for a long time. Every emotion was the same numb nothingness. Even the times I seemed happy everything was clouded over by pain.

Eventually my friends dragged me out of it. And for that I will be eternally grateful. I was made to look back at decisions I had made in the past and realised how I had made them for the wrong reasons. These could either become regrets I would live with and carry with me everywhere or they would become lessons for me to learn from.

Ten months on I'm still learning to cope with the change. In one e-mail I lost my best friend and my boyfriend. I lost my future and my past, because really what was the point in the past if the future had been erased. Suddenly it all meant nothing.

The pain is gone now and although the love isn't the same anymore, it will always be there, because he was, for a time, 'the one'. I've seen him for the first time since we broke up now and it felt like my best friend had come home and left all the pain of breaking up behind us. When he walked through the door I only saw the friend I lost ten months ago. That was when I knew that I was over him.

I'm broken. But not from him anymore. From decisions I have made instead, or maybe that's just me growing up. And that thought brings me to the end of the quote -

No one asks for their life to change, but it does. It's what you do afterwards that counts. That's when you find out who you are.

I did a lot of stupid things when my life changed, but I decided not to regret any of them, no matter how stupid or irresponsible or hurtful they may have been because regret is wasted time. Instead I decided to learn from them and to try and not make the same mistakes again. Sometimes this idea doesn't work, but its OK because I'm still finding out who I am.