“It Could Have Been Different”
Artwork by Laila Aissaoui
“We do not grow absolutely, chronologically. We grow sometimes in one dimension, and not in another; unevenly. We grow partially. We are relative. We are mature in one realm, childish in another. The past, present, and future mingle and pull us backward, forward, or fix us in the present. We are made up of layers, cells, constellations.” - Anais Nin
About a year and a half ago, I penned a piece for Clover Letter about the importance of doing things at your own pace and how to embrace living life as a late bloomer. In the time since I’ve written that piece, life has changed quite a bit - I started dating my first boyfriend (at the time of writing this, we’ve been together for a few weeks shy of one year), worked at my absolute dream job (only for the company to close permanently due to COVID-19), started diving into the world of freelance writing and social media consulting (I am currently planning to start my own freelance digital marketing agency under an LLC - fingers crossed!), and my boyfriend is currently teaching me how to drive - spoiler alert, I’m a pretty decent driver, despite my previous anxieties! I am still learning and growing every day into the person I know I have the potential and power to become; however, being a late bloomer can still feel discouraging and lonely at times, no matter how many positive affirmations I read or how secure in myself I feel I’ve become over the years.
Growing up with a plethora of mental illnesses and hardly any money, I have been predisposed to imagining alternate realities and drifting into other realms where I hit milestones on time, where I defied the odds, where I fit into a narrative so starkly different from my own. When I was as young as 4 or 5 years old, I’d fade into daydreams, staring out the opaque backseat window of my dad’s 1991 Honda station wagon, imagining what it would be like to do the things that I couldn’t - what it would be like if I could swim, if I had my ears pierced, if I had the money to shop for my back to school clothes outside of the sale sections at Target and Kmart. As I got older, the alternate realities I imagined for myself grew more grandiose and complex - it was almost as if I was living fully in these imaginary stories I created in my mind’s eye and barely being present in my real life or doing the work necessary to grow and advance beyond the cycle I always found myself in.
Fast forward to August of 2020, and I’ve managed to achieve some of the things I spent my adolescence daydreaming about, despite the timing a few years later than I’d initially planned. I entered my first serious relationship and lost my virginity at age 21, I started learning to drive at age 22, and I am on track to graduate with my bachelor’s degree at age 25. While the timing of my life path hasn’t necessarily lined up with the narrative society forces on young adults, I am still hitting these personal milestones regardless. However, I am still haunted by the alternate storylines I’d envisioned for my life that exist somewhere between a thought and a memory in the uncanny valley of my mind, taking up space along with every other “what-if” I’ve ever dared to dream up. I can’t help but think of my fifteen year old self lying on her twin bed in her high school bedroom with the walls painted lilac, imagining going to prom with her crush, having a sweet sixteen party and walking out of the DMV with a driver’s license in hand, going on late-night drives down the coast in a car that was all her own, leaving for college and partaking in dorm life, et cetera. It would be hard to explain to her that these alternate realities never actually ended up taking place without breaking her heart. While I’ve learned to own every part of my story and trust that the timing of my life is divine and not accidental, I am a storyteller by nature, and I often can’t help but wonder what would have happened if I had actually fit into a more traditional life path.
About a week or two ago, I stumbled upon a post on my Instagram feed by one of my favorite vegan YouTubers that helped me to accept and make peace with the timeline of my life. The caption of this post included this phrase: “Let go of the illusion that it could have been different.” In the least cliche way possible, this line of text spoke to me and healed me more than any overthinking I’d done on the subject or any external conversation I’ve had to try to make sense of the paracosmic parallel universes I’ve created of my own volition. Yes, my life went differently than the blueprints I laid out for myself when I was younger and more naive - but, as I said in my piece that I wrote last February, blueprints for the future are a fool’s game, and there was no way I could have predicted any of the serendipitous, interconnected events that have happened throughout the course of my adulthood. Everything I’d dreamed up in my head was just that - an illusion. That doesn’t mean that dreaming and visualization are toxic by any means, but it does mean that I have a personal obligation to stop forcing myself to endure the consequences of a reality that never existed in the first place.
If you are a late bloomer like myself, or if you have lost years of your life to mental illness, abuse, or trauma (I happen to fit into both of these categories), I am urging you to please forgive yourself for the way your life did or didn’t go, and do not beat yourself up about not fitting into the narrative that society, media, and some of our peers shove down our throats. These “rules” for society were arbitrarily made up and are by no means one size fits all - to think that they are is to ignore a huge segment of people who lack certain privilege, who are not neurotypical, or who simply feel the need to honor themselves and their boundaries and not do certain things until they know they are ready. It’s empowering to reclaim your narrative and stray away from societal expectations - and trust me, you’ll feel free and practically enlightened when you realize that none of it matters much anyways. Follow your own timeline. Take all the time you might need - life isn’t a race. You’ll get it all done, trust me. Let go of all the illusions taking up space in your mind, and let yourself heal. Once you’ve done this, go forth and write your own life’s story and play by your own rules. You will be so much happier for the trouble once you own every messy and imperfect bit of your life and never look back; trust me - I speak from experience.