Different Life
Originally published at Soft Spoken. Please leave any comments there.
I’ve had some time to think in the last few days, being home by myself, now that I got all my finals stuff done and whatnot. I mean obviously I’ve been playing around with my new iMac, but a person even as into computers as I am can only do that for so long. I’ve been listening to music and actually not watching as much TV as I thought I would. I guess that’s what happens when you don’t have a cable hook-up in your room lol. The only cable hook up that is activated down stairs is on the other side of the basement. In res, I usually have the TV on when I’m on the computer, so I guess I don’t really think as much when I’m not doing anything.
Anyways, I started thinking about the big things that have happened in my life and how much they changed my life. I mean, on the surface they probably don’t seem to have affected me that much but if the things that happened hadn’t happened or the things didn’t had happened, my life would be very different right now. It’s weird to try and think about what my life would be like if things had happened the opposite of what they did.
If I didn’t go to college, I would likely still be working at Mark’s Work Wearhouse, or even Wal-Mart. Maybe I’d be a department manager at Wal-Mart. I really didn’t want to be one because I knew I was going to be going back to school. I mean I was working full-time at Wal-Mart for about 9 months and I was told by a couple people that I had a chance at being a department manager. But we all know how much I hated it there. I was just waiting for something to change so I could actually leave. Maybe I would have moved into Lethbridge with Cara, I mean actually for real moved into Lethbridge, not just college residence, and be working somewhere way better than Wal-Mart, like Cara is.
What if I had gone through with my application to the Multimedia program at Humber College in Toronto? If I stuck with that plan I would be in my second year of Multimedia there and then the following year I’d be taking their web design program.
What if I had stuck with my plan to move back to Grande Prairie back in 2006. How long would I have stayed there? Where would I be working? I would have started at Michael’s Arts & Crafts most likely because I worked there before, I liked working there, and they were probably still hiring at the time anyway (the probably still are for that matter). What would my relationship status be? That was part of the reason I had planned to move back there. I won’t go into details here because, well…I just won’t. But at the time it looked like it might be different than it is now. Would it still be different now? I don’t know. Would Amber and I still be good friends or would I have made friends with different people? Well, you can blame my Uncle Jeff for convincing me not to move back up north. I’m not saying it’s a bad thing, definitely not! But he did convince me not to move to GP and got me to apply for Multimedia at Lethbridge College.
But then, what if I had stayed in Sexsmith/Grande Prairie when my parents moved to Taber? At one point we had been discussing me moving in with Stephanie. Of course, things happened before I moved that changed that plan. The people involved know about that and I don’t feel it’s appropriate to go into details here right now. But if that stuff hadn’t happened and I had moved in with Stephanie, or any of my friends at the time, things would have been quite different.
Or, what if my dad didn’t get the job in Taber, or if it just never even came up? Would we still be living in that small duplex in Sexsmith that only has 8 windows in the whole thing? Our house in Taber has 15 windows, plus two doors three doors that have large windows on them. Would I have moved into Grande Prairie anyway? Probably. Mostly everyone else has and chances are that I would have too. I mean who really wants to live in Sexsmith anyway?! Lol. Or would I have moved to Toronto like I had been planning? I had been looking at the Web Design program at Humber, before I had even considered their Multimedia program, in grade 10 or 11 but then with the move and everything I had completely forgotten about applying for college. If we didn’t move to Taber, maybe I would have still applied.
What if we had moved back to London, when my parents finally realized that I was depressed? They said that if I stayed how I was that we would move back. Really, nothing changed inside of me, but something changed on the outside. I don’t know why, but I started to hide it more. All the feelings of depression were still there but I got better at hiding them.
What if I had stuck with the idea of wanting to be an actor, or a director? Would I still be pursuing it? Would I have already made it? Or would I be going to college or university for it?
What if we never even moved to Sexsmith? Would I still be in London? Would we still be living in the pink, sorry, “rose,” brick house on Bournemouth, next to the Turnbulls across from the Roots, a few houses down from the Bleaks, around the corner from the Harts? Would I still be friends with the same people? I know I would have gone to Clark Road, since that had been decided before we had even thought about moving to Alberta. But would I have made completely new friends or would I still be in contact with my public school friends? How different would I be? Would I still be the same happy-go-lucky person I was before we left London or would I still have gone into the depression that I did after we moved? Usually I think that it was the move that caused it, but what if it wasn’t? What if I would have gotten depressed anyway? But at the time I had never even considered it, because I had always been so happy. My life seemed so good, like nothing could go wrong.
If we had stayed in London would my taste in music have stayed the same? Would I still be listening to that crappy POP music that I can’t stand anymore? Would I listen to any of the music I listen to now?
What about all the times that I thought about killing myself? What if I had actually tried? There were so many times when I was so depressed that I really did want to die but there was this part of me that would question every little detail, like what if it didn’t work? How would I explain it to my parents? Or what if I ended up brain damaged and never could explain it to my parents. I would end up making myself more upset with this questions and I would just sit in my room crying, usually writing in my journal or something. Those questions I asking myself are what kept me from seriously attempting to commit suicide. I guess you could say that they’re what kept me alive.
I guess I should also mention that moving to Alberta was not the only reason why I was depressed. I had a hard time making friends. Thirteen is a really hard age to try and make new friends in a town where everyone has known everyone since they were kids. I think it took me almost two years to really stick with the same group of people. But in the four and a half years I was in Sexsmith I found myself getting hurt a lot (emotionally) by people who I thought were my friends. They may not have known that they were doing it, but they were. It was mostly just little things and at first it was okay and I would get over it, but over time things started to build up. I guess that could fit in under “the move” because making new friends is part of moving, but I never felt completely like most of them were really true friends.
These are the questions that haunt me.
Some of this stuff I have never told anyone. Why I’m writing it on my blog, and making it public (when I could make it friends only) I don’t really know. I may end up regretting it I may end up changing it so only my friends can read it. I don’t know.