What Might Have Been…

I was sitting around yesterday at work daydreaming of how my life would have been changed if I had made different choices in the past.  Being a Libra, I came up with a lot of pros and cons to every alternate choice I could have made…

• When I was 18, I wanted to join the military, in particular, the Marines.  Had I gone through with it (and been accepted), I don’t think I would be as overweight as I am now, if at all.  I’d have more initiative to do things and actually complete them.  I’d be damn sexy with bulging muscles and very little body fat (this is a daydream after all).  I’d have a decent education in linguistics like I had wanted to. 

  The downside would be that I doubt I would have ever come out or met Joe.  I’d probably be so far in the closet that I’d actually would have gotten married and had kids just to hide my feelings.  If I had joined the military, it would have been right about the time of Desert Storm in the early 90s.  More than likely, I would have been shipped overseas and might have had to do things I would never be able to bring myself to talk about…

• If I had stayed in college, my life could have taken another drastic turn.  When I was in college, I was taking French and Japanese.  I wanted a degree in Linguistics so bad.  I love learning new languages, and I have a knack of picking up accents pretty easily.  I speak very little Japanese, but what I can speak is done with perfect pronounciation.  Same with my French and the little Spanish and Chinese I know.  Had I stayed in college and gotten my degree, I could have gone on to get a masters and possibly a job with a big company traveling the world translating for people.  I would be able to live abroad and have a very fulfilling life. 

  The downside is I would have to leave my family behind.  While they would all be extremely supportive to my new career, we’d all know that I wouldn’t be able to visit much and when I did, I’d really have nothing in common with any of them.  My sisters would be very jealous of how sucessful my life had become, smiling sweetly when we were together, but saying vicious and hateful things when I was out of earshot.  Family members whom I had rarely heard from would be calling me all the time wanting to borrow money or come stay in my palatious condo overlooking a beach in France.  (This is my daydream… )

• What if I had never met Joe? Before we got together, I was a rather…..um…."popular" person.  Had I never talked to Joe on AOL 9 years ago, I might have met someone who would have thought the world of me.  Someone who’s whose only desire was to make me smile.  Someone who isn’t afraid to hold my hand in public, even when we are in the "gay" part of town.  Someone who had the same interests in life as I do.  Someone who would support me as I would him.  Someone who would introduce me as his partner and not his roommate.  Someone who would want to spend hours talking to me instead of some stranger online.  Someone who would see me as the missing piece to his life. 

  The downside to having never met Joe would be that I probably never would have met my "dream guy".  More than likely I would have used and discarded him like I had so many others before.  Had I not settled down with Joe, I probably would have turned into one of the many vapid and high maintenance queens that are so frequently portrayed on tv.  And while I may have always been safe in my myriad of anonymous encounters, I doubt I would have walked away unscathed…

After hours of following this train of thought, I came to the conclusion that while I may wish I had taken different turns in the past, I am, for the most part, happy with the way my life has turned out.  Sure, there are some things I wish I had done, and some things I wish I had not done, but I like me and I like being me.  Had I not made those decisions, I’d be someone else, and that’s not acceptable.