Life Was Never Meant To Be Easy

What is a Snooki-est moment? Why do we need to utilize her name as an adjective? Or is it an adverb? GTL is now GTB, what’s the B? Is his name legally The Situation?

Welcome to the highly confused internal communication I had one Sunday morning while my Life Hostage lay next to me on the couch, binge-watching The Jersey Shore. Likely it wasn’t all internal – actually I can guarantee it wasn’t as I seem to recall following some of those questions with the phrase, for fuck’s sake.

All I wanted to do was turn off the TV. Or change the channel. I didn’t even care what we put on, as long as people didn’t refer to themselves in the third person. Well, maybe that wasn’t entirely true. I knew what I wanted to watch – the DVRd episode of Trading Spaces. That’s when it hit me – Snooki & The Jersey Shore, Paige Davis & Trading Spaces…the time warp had hit our Sunday morning!

Do you remember when those shows originally premiered? I’ll give you a hint, it was right around the time Mark Zuckerberg took to making The Facebook (yes, it was The Facebook at the onset) in his Harvard dorm room. Who were you then? Would you even recognize yourself?

I’m always struck when I get a deja vu feeling – something that throws me back into the life I used to have – in high school, in college, my former marriage. Many times it is something small – a photograph, a smell, a taste, a song. The senses are extremely powerful in the way they tie to memories.

Sometimes I smile at who I was, other times I cringe. Many times I blush. Often I want to go back and lay into the girl I was. But then again, that girl made me the woman I am today. Had I not been that girl, would I be this woman?

This whole thing sparked a rousing lunch conversation later that Sunday. I always find it interesting that even after 3ish years, my Life Hostage and I still surprise each other with stories the other might not know. Had I known he was an MTV reality junkie, we may not be a thing. KIDDING – I think…yes, yes I’m kidding.

That night, I lay in bed reading and thinking about our lunch conversation. Where were we back then? Would we have even thought twice about the other if we’d met? Had we even the slightest clue that our paths would someday cross? As M. Scott Peck says we took our own roads less traveled.

What is the road less traveled? A place where life is difficult –  life was never meant to be easy – it is essentially a series of problems which can either be solved or ignored.

Do you ever reminisce about a former version of yourself and wonder who that person would be today? Are you that person? Have you changed? What changed you? Were there problems that sent you down your own road less traveled?

At this moment, and this time, with my Life Hostage, I can’t imagine my life being any different than it is, but it was – vastly so in some cases – and in 10 years, it will look different than it does today. You know what that is? That’s life.

Rachel Olszewski

A hot mess held together on a daily basis by dry shampoo and probiotics, Rachel is still trying to figure out what she wants to be when she grows up but for now is a communications professional by trade. A true Chicagoan through and through, she is an East Coast transplant trying to set down roots. Although the height of her high heels may be getting shorter, Rachel’s expectations are not getting lower and she is on a mission to change the world one person at a time.

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