Full disclosure: I am an impulsive person. If you were to get me in a store, I'd grab the first ten items I see and practically throw my money at the cashier. I tend to only allow reflection when I'm sitting at home, swarmed with that product that will finally make my hair straight, five bottles of diet coke, and a copy of The Notebook. Then me and regret meet up for a little chat:
Regret: You stupid girl, don't you ever want to save up money for college?
Me: Shut up, I need to concentrate on getting my hair to stop doing this wahoo thing.
Regret: Your hair is gonna be the least of your worries when you're living in a box.
Me: Hand me my soda please?
Regret: You're impossible.
I'm telling ya', regret can be a nasty bitch. But the obvious choice between that cute yellow swimsuit and the blue bikini is both. Duh. No sane person would scan things for thirty hours a week, and put all that money into savings!
So why is it, that when I'm faced with decisions outside the shopping arena, my impulsive nature decides to go for a nice round of hide and seek? Where to go to college? To spend a month scanning things or om-ing in downward dog? Who to date? What to study? I might be wearing a cute sweater when facing said decisions, but that does absolutely no good when all this choose your own destiny stuff is scaring the shit out of me. The one thing about finally being a grown up, what seemed so enticing about the big 1-8 to my five year old self, makes me want to hide under the covers and yell for my mommy. All this, coming from a person who is capable to help decide who our next president will be.
So for those of you who are waiting for that wave of clarity after blowing 18 candles, I tell you that the closest I've come to an epiphany is seeing the one certainty in life: there will always be decisions to make. And just because I'm paying taxes and driving after 11:00p.m., doesn't mean I know more than I did in high school. There will still be that lingering thought that, despite multiple pro/con lists, I may have made the wrong decision. There will still be plenty of wrong decisions to come.
Throughout the years of being an impulsive shopper, I have learned to maintain some degree of decisiveness for more important matters. I know where I'm going to college. I have more idea of who I am, though there's that lasting self-consciousness about sounding ridiculously cheesy when talking about who you are. I know I'll always prefer death by chocolate ice cream to coffee flavored, a classic dilemma in any adult's life. But as I'm exploring this whole adulthood thing, I'm beginning to see there is no age of pure clarity. I realize I'll never have everything figured out, but that each decision I have to make will get easier with time. And hey, I'll always have those cute jeans to grab in between bouts of indecisiveness. That always helps.
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