The Blankest Year

I often wonder what things would be like if I made a few different choices. What if I had never taken the job I have now? I never would have met (or slept with) The Coworker or The Friend of a Friend. If I never met The Friend of a Friend, I wouldn't have gotten pregnant. Of course, if I had stayed at my other job, I would probably have kept the kid because I would have been able to support it. Then again, the pregnancy never would have happened because I never would have met the father.

What if I never got into an argument with Mr. Bubble in the first month of our relationship? Maybe I'd still be dating him. Maybe I'd be happy and well fed.

What if I didn't leave my best friend in a bar on my birthday? Maybe we wouldn't have spent most of our last three months together hating one another. Maybe instead of sleeping with The Friend of a Friend when I was sad, I would have called her and had alcoholic milkshakes.

What if The Sweet Boy loved me? If he had told me that he did while he was here, then maybe three days later I wouldn't have slept with The Friend of Friend and gotten knocked up. Maybe I'd be with one of the few people I've actually loved, having what I can only imagine is a relatively normal life.

What if I had gone home after college? What if I had never come here to begin with? What if I kept my pants on and actually took the terrifying risk of getting to know people? What if I never took the internship where I met my best friend? What if I had never taken the major requirement class where I heard about that internship? What if I never added that second major? What if I didn't come to college with most of my major credits? What if I never took all those AP History classes?

Suddenly, my warped mind has created a direct linear path between history, pregnancy, abortion and my current state of unhappiness. Suddenly, history is to blame. Simple as that. Obviously, take AP History did not force me to sleep with two of my coworkers. Nor did it force me to forgo condoms and get pregnant. It doesn't force me to send regrettable text messages to said coworkers when I'm incredibly intoxicated. Although, in a way, history is responsible.

"You digest and absorb your life by turning it into stories...other events, the ones you can't digest, they poison you. Those worst parts of your life, those moments you can't talk about, they rot you from the inside out." -- Chuck Palahniuk

What is history but the collected stories of random people, arranged in a disjointed nonlinear format and retold over and over. History, in the form of the stories I've told and digested and in the others that rot me from the inside, is to blame for all of this. Some stories make you feel alive, and others use you up. Either way, you're haunted by them.

There's no escaping it, really. The past doesn't have an effect on you and it isn't part of you; it is you. You can do what I did and delete the phone number and email address of every boy I ever fucked. Burn the black book. Erase all their messages, incinerate notes, cards, flowers, everything. But the past is still on your right shoulder, looking over everything you do, casting your wet shadow on the sidewalk. You're always haunted. The only thing to do in moments like this, is erase the blankest year, no matter how long it lasted. "If we can forgive what's been done to us...If we can forgive what we've done to others...If we can leave all our stories behind. Our being villains or victims. Only then can we maybe rescue the world. But we still sit here, waiting to be saved. While we're still victims, hoping to be discovered while we suffer."

Stop waiting to be saved. Accept that I am neither a villain or a victim. Forgive.