All my life I've had ideas of who I want to be--what I want to do when I "grow up", where I want to live, who I want to marry, how many kids I want to have. It's all the same.
As humans (maybe this is just a girl thing, I'm not sure) I feel like we take moments and memories, future plans and places, build them up and create this magical world where we know in our hearts that not everything's perfect but yet we have this image of a fairytale where life is almost perfect. It's a defect for us dreamers; a flaw.
I've built up a lot in my life.
I planned when I was eight that I would go to a really prestigious college--at the time, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. I wanted to meet my Southern sweetheart, fall in love and get engaged by the time I was twenty-one. At that point, I'd be preparing to graduate. I'd plan my wedding for the fall a year after graduation, we'd get married in the church I grew up in back home in Huntersville and we'd get a lake house on Lake Norman. We'd have three kids with a wrap-around porch and be happy. I'd be a stay-at-home mom, he'd be a doctor or a lawyer.
This plan obviously changed as time went on. But each time, it was some fairytale plan I had dreamt about time after time again.
I wish there was a way to make myself stop creating these impossible plans. I build things up only to be disappointed in the end.
I went home to Huntersville; I had a wonderful time. I loved being back in the town I've always called home. But it wasn't what I was expecting. It wasn't what I thought it'd be.
This isn't really a "grass is always greener..." moment. This is more of a "things change, life moves on" moment.
Growing up, my childhood home was a mansion to me. It was a light shade of gray with a long driveway. My dad made a flower bed in the middle of the front yard with my mom's favorite pansies and tulips and daffodils. There was a treehouse in the backyard my dad and I built when I was seven (well, he built--I observed). The house was perfect.
As I drove by a few weeks ago, I noticed the house was a lot smaller than I remembered. The house had been repainted a brown color, but most of it was chipping. The house needed a lot of work. The flower bed in the front yard had been torn up years ago, as grass had grown over the flowers and the mulch. The treehouse is falling apart--the rainbow canvas that hung overhead now hangs barely by a nail, the swings were broken and the wood cracking in various places.
The house was less than perfect. It wasn't how I remembered.
Time is a fact of life; it's something we can't avoid, nor can we slow down or speed up. Time changes all. I think that might be the "new" hardest part about growing up.
Huntersville will always be home, but I don't know that I'll ever live there again. A look on the bright side: I know I'll always have some place to visit and remember for the rest of my life.
But for now, I'm moving on to bigger and better things. I'm tired of letting memories and fairytales get in the way of my hopes and dreams.
I'm walking my path; just trying to adjust and live life with each and every bump, mountain, valley and detour that comes my way.
