the life i almost had; a narration of the last four years of my life

it's 4:30 am and i can't sleep.

my insomnia has, of course, led me to catching up on the lives of old friends. i've gone through all my core friend groups from the last 5-ish years of my life, just to see where i'd be if i would have just picked one group and stuck with it.

here's what i've come up with.

a picture from each summer of the last four years. 

i started at byu just more than 4 years ago.

my first year was spent exactly right. i lived in the dorms and ate at the cannon center and went to the dances and attended church every sunday and made cookies for boys in my ward. i even tanked my first semester like every normal college student (NOT normal for byu, but listen... college is hard, beer or not, okay?)

for the first semester of my second year, i lived at home. i blamed it on the fact that one of my dearest friends from high school had a brain tumor, and i wanted to be close to her. and that was... partially true.

but if i'm being honest, like completely honest with myself, it was because the last few weeks of my first year didn't go so well socially. and it was absolutely my fault, i have no way of getting around that. i made some decisions that lost me some very strong relationships and i don't know if i'll ever really get over that.

but anyway, i never looked for an apartment or did any kind of serious thinking that involved moving back to provo. secret? i haven't been back to provo since then. i mean obviously i've been there, but i haven't moved back or even really spent significant time there that wasn't on campus. i can't explain it, something about provo gives me anxiety.

the second semester of my second year, i moved out with my best friend. we'd known each other since jr high and she had never moved out and i didn't want to go anywhere without a security blanket that came in the form of a relationship that i could probably never ruin if i tried, so we moved to orem. close enough?

and i lived this semester trying to do all the things right, but not really. we kind of socialized, we went to maybe 40% of the church that we were supposed to, and my job became more important to me than my school. and, while in the long run i think living with my best friend ultimately strengthened my relationship with her, it was kind of hard at the time. we had small fights that mostly consisted of not speaking for days, and she came back to the apartment maybe 3 nights a week, and i developed a kind of social depression that found its way into my life by way of gossip girl reruns and cadbury eggs--which were the reason my adventures in veganism ended.

--oh yeah, i tried veganism. so far, i've tried the typical provo-byu college lifestyle, the granola-y vegan "phase" college lifestyle, and the working-more-than-schooling college lifestyle.

it was at the end of my second year that my mom was checked into a hospital and then my parents were separated for some time. i could probably use more discretion in this subject, but it is what it is. my dad asked me to move home to help take care of the family. my mom was gone, my dad was a wreck, my sister just avoided being home at all costs, so i was just kind of there. pretending to hold everyone together.

it's important that i say here that i used to blame my proceeding life choices on this phase in my life. while they did play a huge role in things that were to come, i made my own choices. i had my own desires. when presented with the same opportunities that i was, under different circumstances, it's likely that i would have made the same decisions.


after my mom moved back home, i moved to my aunts house. i kind of wish that i never would have done that because it did some serious damage in a lot of my relationships, but it was a necessary step.

it was here that i met bryson.

i moved back home after a few months and started school. the day before school started, bryson and i started a little adventure that turned into a year-long relationship. that entire school year was spent in a whirlwind of mistakes. my parents were completely checked out. they spent basically the entire year in their bedroom trying to sort things out, and my sister and i got away with everything. it was during this one year of my life that i made every serious mistake i've probably ever made.

there's not really much more to say about that school year. i did worse that year than my first semester, probably because i wasn't sober for most of it. i also fell in love that year.

the summer after my third year at byu, i was completely in love with someone and i was prepared to marry him. well, i thought i was prepared to marry him. i laugh at that now, but anyway. he cheated on me, so i told him to never speak to me again, and that was that.

moving on.

my parents moved to colorado this summer, and it should be clear by now that i'm a person who was/is socially unfit for roommates, etc. so, after bouncing around from couch to couch for a few weeks, i moved in with my cousin, who owns a house and lives alone, and continued to live out of boxes. i stayed there for an entire semester, which i took off of school. i had just started a new job, ended a serious relationship, and really came into my problem with substances.

i like to think that it's my relationship with bryson that gave me a substance-abuse problem, but it was really the time after things ended that it was truly an issue. while we were together, i was still mostly just experimenting. it's afterwards that i started trying harder drugs and drinking more and slutting around like a real-life college student.

then one day, i decided to grow up. i moved out into my own apartment, BY MYSELF, and went back to school part time. i tried sobriety and church for two months, and then mike happened. well, nothing really happened, but it was just kind of the principle behind the whole situation, and also ashlee came back into the picture at the same time, so how could i not have returned to my life of narcotics?

right?

so i was back to smoking and drinking and pill popping, mostly on the weekends. or when i wanted to go jogging.

and then my sister moved in with me. (for those who have made it this far, we're in the summer after my fourth year at byu, aka a few months ago.)

my sister has many more friends than i do, and they mostly all have a substance problem, too. we thought we were so sophisticated, with wine parties on the deck and hot boxes in the bathroom, but really, i was just falling further into my habit of denial and anti-socialism. only hanging out with my sisters friends? and being that weird stoner older sister that always gets the kids high?

that was me.

and now..... well. it's only been a few weeks of sobriety for me. and it takes every last ounce of energy and focus not to fall back on old habits.

speaking of old habits, i've rekindled a friendship with bryson. we go to institute together and try to keep each other sober and it's weird. that's all i have to say because i'm trying not to think about it too much, or i'll probably get freaked out and never talk to him again. but it's been good and i'm happy so, no more thinking!

ALL OF THIS IS TO SAY!

i could have lived the provo lifestyle. i could have gone from the dorms, to liberty square, to king henry, where i'd probably still be. except i'd probably be graduated, actually. because i'm into my fifth year now. and i still have a year to go. all those semesters off... shoot.

in any case, what i'm trying to say is that... i always kind of hated the provo lifestyle. i thought it was stupid and fluffy and annoying.

and now, i just have this overwhelming feeling that i need to abandon the life i've set up for myself, the apartment that i've spent the last 10 months furnishing and establishing, and i need to get room mates. and go to church. and hike the fucking Y. and probably stop saying fuck.

except that i know i can't back track, so.. now i'm just feeling stuck. i'm feeling old and sad and overwhelmed by the lives i could have lived.

hopefully, i'll figure out what life i'm supposed to live soon, so that i can get to it. i don't want to feel this regretful hindsight feeling ever again.



if you made it to the end of this post, please leave your name and address so i can send you a thousand dollars.