What do you want?

Yesterday I watched a movie "The Women", with a star-studded cast. The main character played by Meg Ryan discovers that her husband is having an affair. After receiving all kinds of advice and trying to avoid the situation as much as possible, she ultimately decides to divorce him. While going thru her divorce she hits rock bottom loosing all connection with her friends, her daughter, and herself. She ends up running away to some counseling nature camp for help and meets a character played by Bette Midler (FYI: I love her). After Meg talks to her about how all shes ever wanted was to make everyone else happy ,Bette askes her the question... "What do you want? What makes you happy?". That one question becomes an awakening for Meg and she begins to become "selfish" and goes after her own hopes and dreams dispute what others thought about it. Applying that same question to my life, I ask myself "what do I want?". I feel like I'm going after my dreams, but sometimes I wonder what if. I look at the lives of my high school classmates and I feel like I'm falling behind. Some of them are married, some have kids, some a college degree, a career, a house. Then I look at me. I'm 27, I live in an apartment, going to school part time, and working at a decent job just to get by. I know everyone in life has their own path to go down, but sometimes you just wonder how things would have been different. If I had gone to college right from high school. If I had taken my future more into consideration instead of letting my present distract me. Maybe that would have been total disaster for me. You know what they say... Everything aint for everybody. I feel like i needed to do a little living before I committed to a plan and I did. I did alot of living, alot of learning, and alot of growing. With that I feel like I'm more mature in ways than other people my age. On the flip side of it, I'm sure those same classmates wonder the same thing. If they had moved away from our small town instead of staying how would things be different. I don't regret anything I've ever done. I take every situation in life as a learning experience. I'm so grateful to be able to go to school now and I'm not stopping there. I want to become a kindergarten teacher. I want to open my own restaurant. I want to travel the world and see places I've only ever seen on tv. I want to experience life to the fullest. I have so many thing I want to accomplish in life and even if I'm not there yet, I know I'm on the right path.  I have a long life ahead of me and I plan on making the most of it. So when I'm old and grey I can look back on the things I've accomplished and wont have any regrets. I don't wanna say "I wish I did that when I had the chance" I want to be able to leave my children and grand children with someone they look up to and are proud of. So go ahead and ask yourself: "What do I want?"

Daddy who?

My father has never been apart of my life. Ive met him a couple times, but thats about it. Not just him, but that entire side of my family has never really had anything to do with me. No birthday cards, no invitations to family reunions, nothing. I can remember running into my aunts or my grandma from time to time in the grocery store. They would speak, ask how i was doing, and then give me $20. I guess it was guilt money for never being in my life. I have a couple cousins my age on that side and all thru out grade school people never even knew we were related because we never interacted at all. I have nothing against any of these people. As a matter of fact, I feel nothing for them. Its like that part of me is just non-existent. Were related in name only. One person I really did care for though was my great grandmother. I would walk to her house from time to time and just sit with her and talk. I really felt that she cared for me. I miss her to this day and wish I had spent more time with her so id have more memories of her. Despite the common belief that people in my situation grow up to have "daddy" issues, (Anytime I tell people I dont have a dad, they give me this sad "I feel so sorry for you" look) I think I grew up very well. My mothers family loved me unconditionally and they gave me everything I ever needed physically and emotionally. Sometimes I do wonder though what it would have been like to know that other side of me. I have all these aunts, uncles, cousins, maybe even brothers or sisters out there that I know absolutely nothing about. It would be nice to have a connection with these people. To have shared memories of growing up together. Celebrating birthdays, holidays, family get-togethers, and so on. At 27, its a little too late to try and bridge the gap between us. They've always known how to get in contact with me. Im even facebook friends with a few of them and still to this day, besides the occasional "Hey, how are you?" message, there has never been any form of reaching out. I guess what id really like to know is why. Why have they never treated me as apart of the family? Is it because for some reason they dont like my mom? She did have me when she was 18 and as far as I know, im his only child. So maybe they disapproved of him getting a girl pregnant at a young age. Maybe even some event happened before my birth that caused all this? I dont know.