So, I want to re-visit part of what I had mentioned in the last post. The idea of being so young and being expected to know everything and getting to be my age and realizing that we couldn’t possibly know a darn thing.

So, I don’t think I was sheltered much as I was growing up. I had to move around a lot being a kid of an army dad. I remember my freshman year of high school I attended three different schools - a Jr. High school in Texas, a small elementary school in Oklahoma, and a middle school in Kentucky. But I didn’t have a clue what the difference was other than location. How was I supposed to know? Who was supposed to tell me? When I got to Kentucky I was the “new kid.” Everyone knows that being the new kid is torturous! I mean I knew, for heaven’s sake! That was one thing nobody had to tell me. I had been the new kid too many times! But this was going to be my last time, so I did everything I could to settle in. But nobody really took me under their wing to tell me what my future might be the next few years.

I struggled quite a bit those first few months. I won’t go into detail - that will be saved for my diary and it will also save some the embarrassment I am sure it would bring to share for myself and others. But I know, looking back now, that there was no way I was the only one who had those same insecurities, those same issues, those same challenges. (You know who you are.)

Here is a 15-year-old who is supposed to make good friends, but has never had someone show her what friendship looked like (or one who had withstood the test of time). I had no idea what my future held. All I knew was that I needed to make good grades. My relationships consisted of a boy that I liked in elementary school for a few weeks until he upset me and I punched him and he moved on. And as far as extra-curricular activities went, I didn’t have a clue from secretary to yearbook! They were, to me, as foreign as Greenland! (I would have said Germany, but I have been there…lol)

And I will admit, ever so humbly, that I, at the age of twenty-five didn’t have a close friend. I had a husband and a baby to take care of. I didn’t have time for friends. I had to throw any ideas of a “future” out the window. I had to console myself with the fact that I would be a wife and mother all my days, and I would have to give up my dreams of ever becoming a teacher….or marketing executive…or flight attendant….or whatever it was that I had decided to be. I was married but still didn’t know anything about relationships. But to tell the truth I wasn’t mature enough to admit that just yet. And extra-curricular activities of my high school? Well, I am just not sure how any of them truly would have prepared for life.

So, I turned thirty-five, and I am just beginning to touch the surface of who I really am. I understood what it means to have friends, and good ones at that, but I just didn’t have any that would reciprocate the sentiments. I had an idea what my future might be - even though I doubted I would ever see it realized. I mean, who, at this stage of the game decides to go to school and get a degree in entrepreneurship to open up a bed and breakfast. I mean who has the time?!?! And as far as relationships go….well, anyone who has been married for any length of time will tell you that they will NEVER be able to fully understand their spouse! So to say that I was beginning to have serious doubts about this “relationship” thing would be a mild understatement. And by now I was really regretting not spending more time in studies in high school instead of pining over those lost opportunities of participating in a club that was just an excuse to get out of class.

Now, I have come to where I find myself now. I am going to be celebrating a birthday the weekend of my 30^th High School reunion and I am feeling rather nostalgic. I have come full circle as far as residency. I believe I fully understand the value of friendship and I am looking forward to a day when I will be able to dote on someone(s) all that care and affection I have come to value. I want to laugh and be silly with my girlfriends and know that they are life-long friends. I “get” and appreciate friendships. My future ….well…..I still don’t know what it holds for me, but praise God I know Who holds my future and I am confident that He has something very special in mind for me. In the area of relationships…I have learned what is important and what is not. I have seen bad and I have seen good. I choose good, so I left a bad relationship of MANY years in lieu of a great one. The main reason is that now, at the age that I am, I am starting to understand “me” better and can find someone who values me.

“So, Petra, what is your point?” you might ask.

Well, I will tell you. How can a person at the age of fifteen POSSIBLY know what she is just now discovering at the age of over-forty-five? And I am fully convinced that if most people were truthful with themselves, they will discover that they, too, might feel the same way. They might look back and see that maybe the choices made/not made in high school were never reflective of who they were going to be thirty years later. So don’t be so hard on yourself. First of all you are not the only one. Secondly, looking back with regret does absolutely nothing but bring you down. Look forward and vow to teach the future generations that they don’t need to be so hard on themselves when they are in high school. Maybe it will only take them twenty years to discover who they really are.