Lessons Learned

Somewhere between the city lights of Calgary, the construction filled highway towards Banff, the tipped over UPS truck with papers flying every where and in the midst of the Rocky Mountains on my way to my week of serenity....

And somewhere between the flashback bouts of singing to Backstreet Boys and N'SYNC, pretending I was a rockstar as I belted out to Aerosmith and thinking my voice was truly as good as Natalie Maines and the rest of those Dixie Chicks.....

And somewhere between imagining that every gorgeous lakeside home was my summer getaway....Somewhere between this all I was given the chance to spend sometime with myself. Now at first glance over 6 hours with myself, an open road and nothing but my thoughts seemed somewhat terrifying! However, lucky me, I was filled with one of my rare moments of brilliance:

At 24 years of age I have definitely taken a ride on the rollercoaster of life, of love, of work, school. I have certainly not been perfect, nor will I ever come close to it. And at that rare and brief moment of introspection I looked at my life and knew that:

• Perhaps cutting Julie Cooks hair in the 6th grade a week before graduation was a poor choice
• Thinking that athletic tape could substitute for a "biore strip" and would clean my pores, when in fact it just ripped them off
• Having your father drive you all the way across the country in your 2 door hatch back, to only get there, having him turn the car around, drive back alone while you took his plane ticket home was not the most thought out plan.
• Washing your hair 20 minutes earlier than the hair dye box says to find your turned barbie blonde....while having awful barbie blonde hair, you decide to hide it from your mother and dye it brown....it turns grey.....your now grey looking hair turns green because you have gone swimming in chlorine. Listening to your mom is always the best choice.
• Going swimming with a plaster cast up to your armpit, and 100% believing that wrapping a garbage bag on it would work, when in fact plaster and water are not friends
• Playing poker with your brother at age 7 for Halloween candy....i still don't know what the real rules are
• Convincing someone to stick their tongue to a pole in -30 degree weather. I'm still sorry for that one
• Bringing a highschool boyfriend to family dinner and then having him break up with me when finding out the my family was "a bit too crazy."
• Playing floor hockey and being the only one to break a bone--the pinky of my left hand, because I thought hitting your hand with the stick was funny
• Deciding it was a good idea to practice boxing with my best friend in nothing but ski gloves and a sudden disaster ending in no 2 front teeth
• Putting a hole in the front of my skirt while using the iron.
• The countless times I dropped a curling iron on my neck
• Or forgetting to put the guard on the hair clippers as I put a road map into the back of a friends head.

In retrospect, this list could go on and on and on. But what life has really taught me is that there are mistakes that I wish I had never made, words I wish I had never said and some starts that could have had better endings, bad times I've been through and certainly seen damage occur that I could not undo, some things I wish I could do all over again....but it doesn't really matter, when life gets that much harder there is no denying that it makes you that much stronger. I've seen pages turned, bridges burned, but there were lessons learned. Mistakes that I have made, and chances I've let get away. I've taken some roads I never should have taken, missed some signs I didn't see, some hearts I hurt needlessly, and have some wounds that I wish I could have one more chance to mend, but;

The past cant be rewritten so...

I'm thankful for every break in my heart

I'm grateful for every start

Every change life has thrown me

Every tear that had to fall

And for those days I wondered how I'd make it through the night.

And in the midst of all the life lessons, the ones that have passed and the ones that are to come I still say that if you have no regrets, you need to get out more!!!