I really should have done better in high school. I should have maybe gone to class instead of skipping out to smoke pot with my delinquent friends. I should have stopped there and not gotten into all the other stuff I put inside my body. I should have realized that my parents were right about staying in school and studying hard and not messing it up the way I did. I should have gotten the scholarship that I could have gotten if I had done these things. I should have gone away to college and I should have graduated by now.

But instead of doing all of these things that I should have done, I fucked around because it was fun. I smoked pot daily and learned all too early that it would never satisfy me. I moved on to heavier things. I got into situations that a girl like me should have never been involved in. I barely graduated from high school because I couldn’t stay sober long enough to make it there. I started community college right out of high school contrary to the predictions of my family and friends but I couldn’t stay focused. I moved in with my golf-playing boyfriend at twenty only to realize that he, much like the drugs, was not what I wanted.

I still struggle every day with what I should do with myself. I still wonder what kind of difference it would have made had I taken full advantage of the potential that I have. But then I realize that, despite all of the bad choices I have made, I have become the person that I am today because I took the path less traveled. I didn’t make the wisest decisions and I didn’t always know what I was getting into, but I know that I ended up where I am for a reason. I have become a person that I respect. And whether or not anyone else knows who I really am or can see past face value, I know who I am. I know that, although, I may still slip up and do something questionable, I will gain from it one way or the other. I have become stronger in ways that people who have experienced less will never comprehend. Ways that set me apart from the people my age.

For this, I am grateful.

Stuck-in-my-head Song of the Day: "One"- U2