The Sum of My Mistakes

My therapist and I are delving into my past and trying to determine how I got to be the way I am today (read- mildly effed up). It’s usually very enlightening. We’re currently working on my obsessive “people-pleasing” issues. I hate when people are mad at me, even if I know they’re wrong to be mad, even if I secretly think they’re a jackass, I don’t want people mad at me. So we go round and round. She asks why it matters. I say because it makes me uncomfortable. She says “so what?” What does it really matter in the long run?” I squirm and say it doesn’t, but it still upsets me. We’ve really gotten no where on that matter. It boils down to the fact that it’s part of my personality and it’s probably never going to change, although I am learning to be a little less of a door mat in some respects.

So we give up on that subject for a while and talk about my past, and the mistakes I’ve made, the things that many people regret. She asked if I would change anything. I did drugs in high school, slept around, got married young, divorced young, never finished college, never held a long-term job aside from a seasonal one. Lots of little things, some big things. All things others would call mistakes. But if I had it to do all over again, I would do it all the same–the good and the bad– because every little decision led to the birth of my child.

If I wasn’t a little druggie slut, I probably would have been hanging around with the “good kids.” Instead, I hung around with a more interesting crowd. The outcasts, the other druggies, the “freaks.” You know, the fun people. I wouldn’t have become such close friends with one of my oldest and dearest friends, a very cool and unique individual (she knows who she is) that made my high school years such an adventure and talked me down from many scary depressive episodes. If I hadn’t become friends with her, I wouldn’t have met and married my first husband. Now, some may say that’s a good thing…including him probably. But if I didn’t marry him, I wouldn’t have met my current husband. And despite the fact that we’ve had our ups and downs, I’ve never regretted marrying him. I also never regretted moving to Japan for two years. That experience alone is enough to sustain me through those “I never amounted to anything” moments because even if I never do amount to anything, at least I’ll always be able to say that I lived in a foreign country for over two years. But back to the point. Without marrying my first husband, there would be no second husband, and without him, my child would not exist. So I wouldn’t go back and change a single moment because, in the end, my son is the sum of my mistakes, and he makes every one of them worthwhile.

While that’s a decent closing line, I’m not done. We talked about my approach to current and future decisions. She asked if I thought maybe I was making a mistake. I told her I didn’t really care if I was, because everything good I ever had in my life came out of a “mistake” I made, whether it was an actual mistake or perceived as one by those around me. My other truly awesome friend would not be in my life had I not made the decision to move to Japan, which wouldn’t have happened if  I hadn’t met my current husband, which wouldn’t have happened if…you get the point. Everything I have and everything I am is a sum of my mistakes. Not only would I not change a thing, but I’ll continue to go ahead and make mistakes in the future and appreciate all the beauty that comes from them even more for it.