Disappointed in Myself

On this day…

I have been thinking about the past. Joining Facebook brought me back in contact with people I hadn’t talked to in 15-20 years. One of those people recently posted some pictures from our teen years. That got me interested in looking at my own photo albums and while hunting for them I found my old diaries. I leafed through one of them. The entries were painful to read.  If I could, I would tell my old self, “There’s more to life than boys. Stop obsessing about getting a boyfriend and go do something. Then maybe you won’t be so damned depressed!”

But what would the teenage me think of my current life?

I’m sure she would be relieved to know that I finally got a boyfriend. And given the difficulties I had in school, she would be glad that I earned a degree from a good university. But some aspects of my life would puzzle her.  “Why,” she would say, “do you live in Rhode Island? I mean, if you had to leave CT, couldn’t you at least have gone somewhere more interesting? And if you were going to have a kid, why the heck did you wait so long?” I used to think I’d get married in my early twenties and have my first child around 26!

Would she be disappointed in me? I haven’t written any music or books or done anything terribly inventive. My life is average. She never thought she was average. She may have felt inferior in some ways but she also believed herself to be special. So yes, I think she’d be disappointed.