RETRACING THE FOOTSTEPS OF MY YOUNGER SELF

I am an avid journaller. I started journaling when i was 12 years old. I hadn't quite grasped the idea of why a journal was important then.My teenage journals are filled with short erratic excerpts of my day, poems, lyrics from songs, bible verses and quotes from renowned people.Amidst all the naivety, i can conceptualize a clear metamorphosis of who i have came to be today. My writing makes more sense and is clearer as i grow older.

I do not at all dismiss the young girl's voice in my journals as 'Just a kid', i was able to express myself, my thoughts and feelings through lyrics of music, other people's poetry and great words. This way i have found my voice, my opinion and stand from what other people wrote. My personality has been greatly shaped from that kind of literature ( That is why you should screen through what your children read, watch, and listen to at a very tender age - classic case of your thoughts become your actions!)

When reading some of the entries, i am rather dissapointed in some choices i made. If i could go back in time i would not repeat some of the mistakes i made. Mistakes are lessons we learn from and if we do not make this a point of learning from them, we always put ourselves in almost similar circumstances that make us repeat these same mistakes, sort of a vicious cycle.

Sometimes i feel like reaching out to my younger self and tell her to do things more differently;

1. Don't care so much about what people think.
2. Spend more time with your siblings when you get older some will be thousands of kilometers away.
3. Do not date a bad boy... they really are!
4. Save Save Save!
5. Do not perm your hair...at least not yet.
6. Travel some more meet more people, laugh harder!
7. Don't take everything too seriously
8. Never give up on what you love doing.
9. There are some really bad and nasty people out there but there are more good people too.
10. Friends are essential keep them very close.

There are a million things i would like to tell this teenage girl as her life unfolds in the pages i hold, but, they have made her who she is today and i believe she turned out great! :-) Maybe extravagance made  me know importance of saving.Dating a bad boy made me know when a good man came along, maybe perming my hair made me realize that ' I am not my hair!' ( Yes! I stole that from India Arie)

If i was given a chance to go back and change a lot in the past, I wouldn't. I may have had a diffrent outcome, the ideal life, a complete state of Utopia, but then, i would be wondering what it would have felt like if i had done things differently and i would have never known!

THE WAVE

I am having my lunch break and as i walk past a shop, an old newspaper on the door of a new shop under construction stops me on my tracks. It is my old high school friend and her glam wedding photos are splashed all over the newspaper. Since i am with my workmates i tell them how cute they look on the photo and we all start oohhing and ahhhing at the couple. I finally decide to give her a call and catch up and she says the baby has been born. I am truly happy for her as we talk of the little bundle of joy. At the back of my head i am screaming at the top of my lungs.. "What????"

What happened to the plan back in school where we were supposed to stay single get flashy cars, pretty clothes before we let the knights in shining armor whisk us away? Reality check. My friend calls it the WAVE. The wave starts when all your girlfriends start getting married; have babies or actually settle in serious relationships. She says that if it misses you (the wave), you have to wait for 5 years to get into the wave again.

I may not be of the same school of thought, which proclaims spinsterhood and possible celibacy for the next half a decade.I believe its called growing up and taking risks that others are not willing to. Its knowing who is right for you and not the obvious heart breakers. Its putting your Knight in shinning armour before all the pretty dresses.

I may not be ready to take some of those risks right now but i am preparing to. I am preparing to be a great wife, mother and family pillar, I am letting God make me the best i can be, strong, prayerful, virtuous and loving. Just like flowers some open first and the rest come following later. In this case I may be a late bloomer but definitely a Bloomer!