Life Waits for No One

In light of a recent life event, I have been doing some critical thinking on life and the way we “plan” for things.

When I came to college I planned on marrying a girl by the time I hit the age 25, and I certainly wanted to find her by 19 or so. That was a plan that failed.

I then came out, and moved my plans over so I would find my long-term boyfriend in college and we would figure out where we wanted to go together. That planned failed.

I also planned on moving home after I graduated college to help my family take care of my great grandmother. That planned failed.

I’ve been so stuck planning my life away in this fairytale world where everyone follows what I think they should follow, but I think I’m actually growing up now because I’m starting to see that things don’t always go the way you want them to. You can blame a number of factors for why life hands you the lemons that it does, but there is no blame to be placed. There are many things that are simply out of our control.

I always tell myself that I had to finish school and that’s why I couldn’t move home earlier, but I didn’t have to do anything. I chose to do so because it’s important to my career and myself. I’m learning more everyday that taking responsibility for your actions is the key to life, along side realizing that your actions can only do so much before life swoops in and does what it will do.

Things don’t go my way, and for a princess like me, that’s a hard pill to swallow but it was one that I needed to swallow, and I’m still working on this everyday. (It's a really big pill.)

Today is an extra humbling day though. My great grandmother has passed away and there is truly nothing I can do about that. No matter if I were in Medford, Corvallis, or New York City, it would have happened. I’m lucky enough that I haven’t had to deal with a whole lot of family death, but on the flip side I get to experience it when I’m older, and it’s been difficult since most of my family has been there my whole life.

So today I’m not going to worry about boys, or my grades, or what my friends are up to tonight. I’m going to worry about my family. I’m going to stop and think about them for a change. While growing up, it’s easy to take them for granted, and easy to think that they will always be there but guess what… Our parents were right. With nearly everything, but especially when they told us that life waits for no one.