Existential Do-Over

Last night, I dreamed that I woke up on September 7, 2005. I shared an apartment in the Museum District of Houston with my live-in boyfriend, Aussie, and had just gotten my first architecture job after graduating. 

Except in my dream the apartment was far grander than the loft we'd had in real life. Two bedrooms, an enormous kitchen with a dozen cafe tables and pairs of chairs ("for when we entertain, dah-ling!"), and fantastic natural lighting in every room thanks to twelve-foot ceilings. Gasp! We were rich. 

As Aussie proceeded to act as if it were an ordinary day and I had not just gone through a time portal ("shall I wear this shirt or this one? The blue one is so fetching" (yes, he really did talk like this)). I suddenly knew that I was being offered a choice to have a redo on the previous fifteen years of my life.

I sat perched, traumatized, on our lusciously decorated bed as Aussie went about the business of getting ready for his job as a tech genius, talking about who-knows-what because I was preoccupied with having an existential crisis. 

What would life be like if I had a do-over? Having a rich boyfriend would be a great start, for one. I could make sure I passed all my architecture exams for my license this time around (surely easier to do if actually sober). I wouldn't have to become an alcoholic. Fewer bad one-night stands. I never would have given up on the OEN blog. Not waving off multiple psychiatrists' theories that I was bipolar, not just depressed. I would have put more of my money into savings instead of Kate Spade purses and Coach shoes. Trying harder to find a good guy for marriage and kids (although not with this Aussie yahoo who would eventually make me want to stab myself in the ovaries). Getting fat. Maybe staying in Texas to be near my family, even if it came with road rage and sweating profusely in the middle of winter. 

Imagine, a chance to fix all my big regrets. Sure, I'd have to relive fifteen years to accomplish that, but wouldn't it be worth it?

No. FUCK no. The sentiment boomed throughout my body and soul like a gong. 

An instant later I woke up, alone in bed in my apartment in Portland.

Yes, I thought. I chose right. 

My life may not be the traditional one with a family and a mortgage and a job as a cubicle monkey, and it certainly isn't glamorous (although these pjs I'm wearing in the middle of the afternoon are quite glittery). I did make all those mistakes in my life, every one of them. Probably more. People I hurt with casual sex like the Marine and others whose names I couldn't be bothered to remember because I was "sexually empowered." Making people I care about worry every day that they'd get a call from the police or a hospital because of my drinking. Unleashing my selfishness and immaturity upon the world without giving a shit about the repercussions. Hell, there are probably mistakes I made that I'm still too naïve to understand were mistakes. 

How can this life I have now be better than one where I had the opportunity and foresight to fix everything before it happened? 

Because I love the life I have now. It's not perfect, not at all, but it's a life I fought for for so long. 

I never married someone because it was what was expected of me. I never had children because I felt like I was supposed to. I left a corporate career that was killing my soul one meeting at a time. I left the humidity-belching south. Manic depression became a gift instead of a curse because it gave me a brilliant idea for a book series. 

I mean, come on, I get to write. Every day. In my beautiful apartment, overlooking a street full of old maple trees. Every day feeds my soul instead of destroying it.

If I'd spent my life maneuvering easily around hardship, who would I be now? Probably someone less wise and far less interesting. 

Here's to the next fifteen years of my mistakes being just as worthwhile.