WEEK #56 (6-10-12 to 6-16-12): If I Had My Life to Live Over…
I would not want to change anything that would alter my timeline one iota, because one small change could shift every aspect of my life to a point that my beautiful, intelligent, light of my life, my daughter would not be born. That is saying a lot. My life has not been happy much of the time, and has been shaped by violence, neglect, and abuse far, far more than any person’s life should be. But to have my daughter, well, that makes everything worth it.
That said, in order to treat the writing prompt that GBE2 has for this week with some serious thought and reflection, I’m going to ignore the fact of my life being put right with the first time I locked eyes with my daughter
I have toyed around with “what if” scenarios before. I love thinking. Seeing what one link in my life links to, and what that link is in turn connected to, is a thought experiment that has allowed me to unravel some rather confusing strings of occurrence in my life.
One of my standard “lines” in my cocktail conversation portfolio is that in a neighboring alternate timeline or parallel universe, barely removed from this one, in which I think I’ve been fortunate as an adult, I’m living in a trailer park on U.S. Highway 30, Indiana taking care of 5 snotty nose grandkids by the time I’m in my 40s. Small, seemingly inconsequential acts can totally redirect the course of a persons life.
The most glaring and shocking thing I’ve ever considered in imaginary reworkings of my life would be to not be born. I was an unplanned and unwanted child, though I only explicitly know this through one angry outburst my mother made to me as a child. Many other factors in my life also corroborate my family’s take on my existence. I would never allow any child to be hurt and suffer the way I did. This more than any other factor has shaped my belief in a woman’s right to have total and absolute control over her own healthcare and what she allows to happen to and within her body. No child should be so unwanted that the child wishes that he or she had never been born, and too often that is what unwanted children wishing for themselves. I want every child to be a wanted child. That would be a beautiful world.
If there could be do overs I would work my ass off in high school to learn math so that I could have studied to become an architect, or gone into computers way back in pre-personal computer days. I would also have worked constantly to accumulate savings.
Also way back in early High School I would have avoided situations that then escalated beyond my ability to influence, control, or escape from; I would try everything within my capability to make sure a couple of men who exploited and harmed young girls, either landed in jail, or were rendered incapable of harming anyone.
If I could know then what I know now, I would have never started smoking tobacco and I would have started running and lifting weights when I was in my early teens. I would have hugged people in my family that I never got to hug. I would encourage friends to not drink and drive so that they could live beyond the age of 21 and I could know them as adults.
I would go to the very first Genesis concert near my childhood home,in Ohio, I think, one of the first in the U.S., and taken pictures, and chat up a teenage Peter Gabriel. I’d call the cops about a psycho stalking John Lennon in November 1980 so December 1980 would unfold very, very differently. I’d start a punk band in the middle of the cornfields in which I grew up in the mid-1970s. I’d be independent and self-reliant. A couple guys in college that I never got to know very well would have a few very fun times. I’d hike the Rockies. I’d hike the Pyrenees. I’d canoe the swampy connected lakes near my childhood home, where Gene Stratton-Porter did her ethological studies and photography in the early 20th Century, with my brother while we still could.
I would try to expose some of the early “moral majority” hypocrites for what they were before they they launched the politicization of religion in America. I’d have done everything possible to Ronnie Rayguns from being elected. I would sneak up on and kick Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld in the nuts before they had 24/7 security. I would somehow keep George Bush the first from negotiating the arms for hostages deal that set up the precedent for negotiating with terrorists and got Reagan elected. I would have Florida’s Sec. of State in 2000 have some visitors who would dissuade her from several of the illegal acts she orchestrated in our timeline. Somehow I would make sure Gore’s admin read the reports on likely terrorist plane attacks.
Basically, I’d take a different early path so that a more confident and self-assured me could travel more, and be more financially comfortable from mid-life on. There are a few bad guys that I would try to neuter, figuratively, or not figuratively. I would enjoy family and friends more each and every moment I was with them. And yes, I would engage in political mischief.