Traces of what could have been

Mckenna had a baby.
And I love him.

Then
An old friend (like someone I haven't talked to since elementary school) found me on facebook. And then she had the nerve to post a link to her blog. And because I have a sickness and have to read every scrap of word that I find (blogs are like crack to me) (even badly written blogs), I spent two hours last night reading her about her life. Reading about how very very different it is from mine.

More importantly, how very similar it could have been to mine if I had not drastically swerved off from the path I was on at age twenty one.

At twenty one I was walking down the path that most girls from my religon were walking. Decent job, a little bit of an education, a little bit of travel under my belt and marriage and children and white picket fences were right on the horizon.

Thankfully, with the help of some amazing friends who knew me better then myself, I came to the realization that I was miserable. That that particular lifestyle was not the one for me. So I blindly picked a new path and ran down it as fast as I could. It wasn't until I was hitchhiking across Kona a year later that I finally pulled up short and stopped blindly running. At that point I picked a new path and have been (mostly) happily skipping down the road.

However every once in a while I see ghost reflections of the path I could have been on. As I held Mckenna's beautiful little boy and automatically fell into the bouncing walk that I used to do with Sierra, it wasn't surprising that I felt a surreal vision of the little child that could have been mine. I came home that night and was washing dishes and I didn't have to stretch my imagination to hear children laughing and playing with trucks at my feet. Reading the blog entries from my long lost friend isn't helping with the weird de ja vue. Can you get de ja vue from a life you haven't lived?

After reading that I was in a bit of a fog. Trying to analyze my feelings. Was I feeling regret? No. Was I baby hungry? God no, not for my own at least. Was I babysitting hungry..? Yeah that felt more accurate. Was I unhappy? No again.

As I wandered around the house in a trance, Jess came bounding into the room. She chattered my ear off and dragged me into the bathroom to dye her hair a new shade of red/brown. At one in the morning. And just like that I snapped out of it. Giggling, with red dye on my hands and spraying Jess with the detachable shower head, with our mutts barking disapproval at us, I realized "oh yeah. My life is awesome". My path isn't what I thought it would be. But damn is it fun.