I’m going to take a little break from all the fertility/insemination talk. A couple of nights ago, I was trying to find a notebook or pad of paper to jot down pros and cons on different donors and I found some writing that I did back in my 20’s. It might be the equivalent of a blog post back then, although not published for all to see.

This is a piece that I wrote at 21 when I had just moved to NYC after graduating college. While so much has changed in my life since then, I thought it was still relevant today. It might be slightly different than I imagined, but strikes a cord in terms of where I am in my life right now and the new chapter I am about to start. So here it is:

It’s weird how life just happens. One minute you are in this comfortable, familiar place and the next you are pushed into this alternate universe. As awkward and uneasy as it may be, you know that it is where you belong. You wake up one day and this strange, foreign place is yours. It is what makes you keep going; it is what keeps you being the person that you are.

Some people aren’t meant to stay confined to one place. They are meant to roam around and scare the shit out of themselves in order to find out who they are. It is a journey that might bring them back to where they started, but everything in between was this wonderful, horrible, beautiful experience.

Your life gets twisted in ways that you once thought unimaginable and all you can do is hold on for the ride. All you can do is hope that it’s all for something…that these twists are taking you to the place you are meant to be. I don’t think that anyone truly knows what they want for their lives. I mean, truly truly knows. I meet people who say that they have all these plans. They know where they want to live when they’re 80 and what kind of cake they’ll have at their wedding and how many kids and grandkids they’ll have. That’s all bullshit. How do they know what they want? How can they be so young but know what they want out of life when they haven’t even lived it yet? I’m not saying that I don’t have any of these plans. I want 3 kids (2 girls and a boy), I want a Vera Wang wedding dress, and I want to marry Pacey. But I know that these plans don’t mean anything. I have no clue who I am going to marry. I don’t even know what I want to be when I grow up (and I’m 21).

If you spend so much time planning then you are constantly going to be disappointed. You won’t know what happened when you get twisted upside down. It is good to dream, but it is also good to be prepared to be surprised. How can you know what you want for your life at 50 if you don’t even know who you will be at that point? It would be sad if you were 50 and still the same person you are now. You just have to explore life like you would explore a new city and take it in as you will.

Make yourself uncomfortable. Immerse yourself in your alternate universe. Let life just happen.