I can't lie and say I haven't thought about it. What would my life be like if I wasn't married and a mother? Wouldn't it be great (if I wasn't those things) to flee this pressure right now? To make it to the coast and rediscover another something about myself? People tell me that it's admirable that I am so young have myself figured out. I get that so often. But for the first time, I was told yesterday that I'm so young that I've got so much to learn about who I really am. I thought I knew. I was certain that I have created who I want to be forever. But she didn't mean that. She meant that I will learn more about myself and just as I have in the last few years created this image of myself it will certainly (hopefully) continue to evolve.
And then she said something that slapped me. I said something about already being married, and she said something so simple but it shook my world. "You're still young." So simple. Still young, like, I have time to get out? Like there are still so many years ahead that things are bound to change? I didn't jump to any defenses either. I just thought about it as I took another drink of my wine and looked around the room at the different people living there lives in different stages. What would it be like to be in those stages?
THEN, it hit me! Why should I even consider my life without Brandon and Aiden. I am 100% confident that even if I had waited, if I had said no to a life-long (as I thought) commitment to Brandon and then no to the effort of having a child...I would still be searching to find them. To make it happen one day. I am extremely lucky actually to have been able to find them and be living these moments with them. If I had said no, would I be as lucky to have found a man that would be more perfect for me than Brandon? Or a child that time brought so perfectly into the world? No way.
Things will change. But now I am back in control. Just because I'm already married and have a child doesn't mean that I have to stop 'finding' myself. That's the actual madness behind the methods of my past few months. I keep telling people that I have been spending ridiculous amounts of time in Athens behind a cocktail to convince myself that I am 'only 24'. I know now, I think, that it is actually because during all of the years between highschool and moving back home I was out finding myself in Athens and Michigan. In city after city I spent my nights and days discovering who I was and who I wanted to be. After I came home people were so amazed I had done such a good job that I quit looking for myself and just became. My disgust with the last few years is not becuase of my responsibilities but because of the fact I was so envious that people I knew (i.e. you) were still in the 'discovery' stages of their lives. I wanted that. I'm not sure where I got the idea that you had to find yourself and then be that person the rest of your life. I mean, isn't that why people become life long scholars?
ANYWAY, I'm off. To learn more. This is a new chapter! I may be a different person by the end of this next year. Or I take that back, a more established Ashley Marie. I know what I like but there must be something else out there that I am not even aware of that I am yet to like too. And there is definately another side of me I have yet to discover. And I'm not talking motherhood or wifey stuff, I'm talking Ashley Marie stuff. Who is this woman? What else is she made of?
I'll get back to you on that.
