If I Could Go Back

If I could go back ten years and tell myself something...

If I could somehow do that, I think I would just tell past me to believe in herself.

I'd tell her that no matter how terrible things may be, things are going to get better sooner than she might think.

Ten years is a long time, ten years ago I was thirteen and the following year I would think that my entire world was about to end. In retrospect I am grateful for the past because it taught me a lot and no matter how much past me stumbled, she made it.

When I was thirteen, my parents told us that they were splitting up. My mother would probably get my sister because of how young she was and I didn't want to leave her, so I went with my mother, despite me being a daddy's girl, and we moved to a new province to live with our family who spoke a different language and who I had probably only seen a handful of times in my entire life. I was devastated.

All I wanted was to go home and be with my friends and my dogs and have my own room again. I'm not going to lie, the years between thirteen and eighteen were the most difficult and traumatizing years that I have lived through but I did live through them.

I messed up all the time, I didn't want to be in school, I didn't want to learn the language, I was overweight and I dreaded weekends because that meant going home. I know I brought a lot of trouble down on my own head but I also know that a lot was there before I ever rebelled in my quest for attention.

I eventually calmed down and I started talking to my current boyfriend. We have been dating for five years now and I sometimes still cannot believe that he chose me. I was such a broken person when he met me, I used to lie all the time simply because I could, I started drinking at a young age and I even smoked for a while. Peer pressure was definitely a factor in all of that but so was my desire to be cool and noticed.

Of course smoking cigarettes on the rugby field and getting drunk on weekends was not going to do that and I spiraled even more. I often feel like if I had not have started going out with my boyfriend then my life would have been very different. He is the most well behaved man I have ever met and I'm so glad to say that a lot of his life views rubbed off on me. Not to mention the incredible influence that his family has had on me.

The way I grew up was that family is everything and I agree with that but most of my family never speaks to me so when I was thrown in the deep end of his I won't pretend that I wasn't shell shocked. They are all involved in each others business and they all know everything about each other, they are incredibly close knit and I thank God every time that I realize that I am part of that.

I wish I knew then what I know now, not to change anything because I don't believe I'd be the same me then, but to comfort past me because all she wanted was someone who understood, someone to count on, someone that wouldn't leave her.

She would have been so much happier if she just knew the happiness that was coming.

If she had of known about her incredible and loving boyfriend, her amazing sister and her fabulous family she might have made less mistakes but in the end we are all made up of decisions and I may regret a few of mine but they have brought me to my life now and I wouldn't change a thing.

Thanks for reading xx