A new year...a new decade

I’ve been having a lot of thoughts on my mind recently about entering into a new decade…I probably should have started writing this when it was first crossing my mind, but knowing myself I always tend to let the ‘interesting’ things that cross my mind sit too long and then it all comes out a lot less eloquent than when it first entered my thoughts…I need to change that habit…

So I’m going to be turning the ‘big’ twenty in two days, a change for sure, its not like turning 16 or 18, it seems a bit bigger than that in a way, because I’m closing an entire decade of a chapter of my life, and to think that this hasn’t happened for ten years, and won’t happen again for another ten is a big thought. That and ten years ago I wasn’t even thinking of how big a change it was turning ten…I wasn’t looking back at how far I’ve come, weighing all of my choices, decisions, dreams on a scale and contemplating where I’ll be or what I’ll be doing in the next ten years…

Ten years ago I was more interested in the presents I would receive, who would come for my birthday party, how much fun it was going to be opening my presents and playing those silly little games you think are fun when you are ten years of age. It didn’t matter that I was coming into a new decade of my life, that I was no longer in the one digit age, but that my age had two digits in it now, I didn’t look back…I probably looked forward but didn’t think a lot about it, I didn’t wonder where I would be in ten years, or even the next year, I was content to just live each day as it passed by.

But now…it’s weird to think that this is the first decade in which I can look back, and look forward and weigh the choices and their consequences on a scale. It’s the first decade of my life in which I’m old enough to really care about all of that, and thinking that I’m already halfway to forty makes it even harder.

Things have changed a lot in the last ten years, to say the least.

I’ve moved at least seven times, been to two new countries, traveled below the equator, made a lot of new friends…and enemies, well I’m not sure if I have any, but if I do…I hope that we can come to an understanding and work tings out between us.

Some of my close friends have moved far away, had babies and gotten themselves married.

I’ve known what it feels like to lose someone you love dearly and wept about the loss, wishing that my tears would be enough to bring them back to life.

I’ve felt the distinct mark responsibility has on you, and how it feels like to be ‘on my own’. Knowing that ten years ago my decisions were made for me, and in the last four or so I’ve come to where I had to make my own decisions and not depend on anyone else to make them for me, gone through many withdrawals when I started making my own choices and made a lot of mistakes, learned a lot of lessons, and feel a lot ‘wiser’ than I did before because of them.

I’ve wept openly and felt the hurt emotions can have if you depend too much on them. I’ve thought myself to be ‘in love’ many times, but it usually turned out to just be extreme infatuation, or perhaps I’m just in denial about them…

I almost ran off and got myself married a few times…thank God I didn’t…

Been hurt, and hurt others, been sorry and been forgiven and forgave too many times to count.

So many things…in the last ten years, memories, some happy, some sad, some forgotten, some just remembered…but all there still. Everything which has come together to make me what I am today…

So here’s to this new decade, through the good or bad, through the hurt or happiness, may I look back in ten years and be content with everything that may have happened whether good or bad, seeing it as stepping stones, learning processes which continues to hopefully make me into a better person than I was before…