lauren and stuff.

A scatterbrained reflection on 2011.

A lot happened this past year that I never would have expected. I have to take everything as a learning experience. I can’t have regrets. As George Bernard Shaw said, “A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable but more useful than a life spent doing nothing.” If that’s true, my life must be honorable as shit. I know I made mistakes, but there are a lot of memories I look back on that never fail to make me smile. That’s what I keep with me. I try to compare where I am now with where I was 365 days ago, and one thing stays the same. I’m still a mess. I’ll always be a mess. But what would life be if there wasn’t some chaos? It wouldn’t be life.

A year ago, pretty much exactly to the day, a significant chapter of my life closed. My first relationship—my first love—was over. I’m not here to marinate over that (lol piece of shit) but it really was a blessing in disguise. I was free. I thought of it as the worst possible start to my year (little did I know things would only get worse), but I came to realize everything I missed out on when I was still with him. I had time to be me, without worrying about this one person who consumed so much of my time and energy—physically and mentally.

Things changed in a big way with friends, family, and school. I can’t even begin to list the ways the dynamics of all those aspects of my life just seemed to flip on me. I felt like I was out of control. Not only “out of control” meaning crazy and all over the place, but “out of control” meaning I felt like I wasn’t in the driver’s seat of my life. It seemed like someone else was the cause of every change at every turn. Sometimes I still feel like that. But I’ve learned this year that all the choices I make don’t have to involve anyone else. I’ve made a lot of choices that I’m not proud of, but I know that every single one of them made me grow up. That’s it. I grew up. I still have more growing up to do, but realizing how much less others were growing up just made me feel like I was better than that. I didn’t have the time to be an ignorant little baby whenever anything serious happened. And I sure as hell don’t have time for it now.

Here’s to 2012, a new beginning, a new chance to grow up.