Right, so this might seem like a weird article to read in the beginning but the more I explain the more I think you will get it. Growing up my family was quite young, my mother was 16 when she had me and my grandmother was 17 when she had her. I broke the cycle and have yet to have children. For me I date older men because growing up I was around people much older than me that didn't have children so I find it easier to relate to people around my parents' age.
I've been through quite a lot in my life, relationships that have been a massive high and then crashed and burned. I had cancer when I was 17 years old and had a 23cm tumor removed as well as my right ovary and appendix, I was molested twice as a child both before I turned 17, and had a psychopathic biological father that chased my family and me around the country for most of my life in an attempt to kill us. Top it off with dating a married man for 6 years of my life only to have my heartbroken, I can definitely say I have lived a life and a half in such a short period of time.
One thing that I have always wanted ever since I thought that I wasn't going to be able to have children is a child of my own. I have quite a lot of love to give and haven't found the right person so I have thought about what I wanted and where I want my life to go. If I don't find the right person before it is too late I will end up having a child on my own, my mother did it and I turned out okay so I have a good role model to think of.
The biggest thing that has happened since living such a huge life so far is that I have always felt deep down that I don't have a lot of time left. Maybe that is because I have lived so much so far and maybe because I am so much more mature than most of the people my own age but deep down somewhere inside me I have always felt that I was not going to live a really long life, maybe my anxiety has a lot to do with that.
When you have a feeling like this it causes you to want to rush things, relationships, children, career progression, and so on. It can be very hard to explain to those around you how you just know that you don't have a lot of time left in your life when you are so young but inside you just know. I'm not perfect with how to deal with this but one of the things that I have started doing is trying to occupy myself with things that I really enjoy.
The age-old saying of make sure you wear clean underwear in case you get hit by a bus can be adopted here, my way of dealing with these feelings is to make sure that I am doing the things that I love every day, finding fulfillment in doing whatever makes me happy so that if it is my time at the end of the day and I am going to go earlier than most people, then I want to go out with no regrets.
Everyone will have regrets in life but some of those things are out of your control. No one wants to have regrets in life and my mother has always taught me never to ever say "What If". Writing this article is a perfect example of me not ever saying "What If". I have always found writing cathartic, something that gets all of the things in my mind out there and if I can help just one person in life, I feel like it is worth it.
Now I am not saying everyone should go out and start doing crazy things but I definitely recommend writing down the things that you want to achieve in life and JUST DO IT! A perfect example of this is when my mother turned 40 I decided that the best gift I could give her was not material but rather an experience she will never forget. I paid for my mother and father to go to the U.K together and they also did a quick 2 day trip to Paris while over there. While Paris was something that they had never been interested in and my mother wasn't even going to get off and see the Eiffel Tower because she had no interest, by the time she had arrived there on a tour bus she knew she had to get off. How can you just drive past the Eiffel Tower and ignore such a world-renowned monument?
Towards the end of their trip to Paris, they were sitting in a café when my mother turned to my father and said "What have we waited for? Yes we had kids, a mortgage, and all the other adult responsibilities but look out in front of you, what have we been waiting for all this time to actually go and do this?" That is the best analogy I can come up with right now to show that no matter how much time you think you may have on this earth if there is something you want to do, something you want to experience, or anything that you feel like you just HAVE to do…. What are you waiting for?
