Entry #10: Starting Over

There are times in our life where we have to look back and evaluate the choices we have made that have led us to where we are. Sometimes we find that we are not where we want to be, somewhere along the way we stepped off the path we thought life would take us and onto a path we never wanted to be. For me that time was my first attempt at college. I had followed my high school girlfriend to college, giving up a full ride at NAU to pay my own way at U of A. At the time I made every excuse in the book; I wasn’t following her, NAU just wasn’t as strong as U of A in the program I wanted pursue, Flagstaff is too cold and I wouldn’t be happy there, I liked the school spirit at U of A, my cousin went to U of A and was really successful. Really though the deciding factor was her. This decision was the decision where I stepped off the path I wanted to be on and took my life in a direction I never thought it would take. I wasn’t happy at U of A having a pre-existing social structure led me to not expand my social structure nearly as much as I expected to. I wasn’t making new friends I didn’t dive into my studies I floundered instead of flourished. Three years later I was still at U of A, I was still dating the girl I followed to U of A but our relationship was tense. My schoolwork didn’t improve and I was in danger of being expelled. I was suffering from a deep depression and hardly was able to get out of bed each day.

Something had to change and so I restarted my life. The girl I was dating and I broke up in what was a semi-amicable break up. I moved back home with my parents and restarted my academic career, attending Glendale Community College. Now I have been very successful with my new life. I have been making new friends, rediscovering who I am and maintaining a 4.0 GPA. I am seeing a therapist and my depression is under control; I am happier now than I have been the last 3 years. This new found success is due to the fact that I hit rock bottom and decided I needed a change in my life, a drastic one.

Sometimes it takes that drastic change to get the life that you want to live. It was terrifying leaving the comfort of a relationship I had come to rely on, the social structure I had built for myself, to go into something new. The pay off was there though. Had I stayed in Tucson attending U of A nothing would have changed, my life would have continued to decline until there was absolutely nothing left to live for anymore.