The most influential person in your life

I saw a reddit post today about what single person changed your life. Most people's answers are for the better. Mine's different.

Hindsight is a bitch. One day, you may find yourself wondering how you got to a certain point in your life. You wonder where things went wrong, and if your mind is willing, it wanders back to the moments in time where your life started down some path. My mind does a wonderful thing when it gets there, and it likes to explore all the options I didn't take, even the ones I didn't know I had. And then it stretches itself across the chaos of time and images what could have been. Basically, my mind is an asshole.

A good amount of time, I think back to the summer before college when I started dating a girl. My mind thought: "Well, why not? We'll see where this goes." Like I said, he's an asshole. I had no idea that words could be so powerful until a couple years later. By then, the words had become "I should stay with her, she still loves me." They became "I owe this to her." They became "We can make this work."

I entered into a relationship with the idea that I would see where it took me. Eventually I fell in love with the girl, thinking that she was all I needed. There was a distance between us (three hours by train, but we made it work for a time). Time passes, and hindsight kicks in like the bitch it is. I realize that we aren't the same people. That's ok, people grow together. However, I realize that I've grown apart, and she has grown into something that wasn't the girl I fell in love with. But she still loved me. The words I told myself convinced me that we should try to make it work for a time. And I did try. And I failed, because it seemed like I was the only one. I would ask for things to change, and the would. For a time. A couple weeks things would revert back to the way they were.

So I did reprehensible things. I lied, I cheated, I told her the distance was the reason. I told the truth: she was too dependent on me, she was suffocating my life from hundreds of miles away, and that I want to try anymore. And I hurt someone very deeply.

Why did I act so shitty? It was a good idea at the time. That good idea was me trying to keep me happy. Fortunately, that decision was a good one. But the consequences and reasons were shitty.

Why am I telling you this? It wasn't the girl that was the person who changed my life. I was. Every single time my life has gone down the shitter, it was because of myself. Every time, I picked myself back up. There was no one else. Most of the people I know are too centered on their own lives to even stop to worry about mine. I think the most profound lessons aren't the ones other people teach you. They are the ones you teach yourself. You can have inspirations in people, and they can help a great deal. Don't diminish your own contributions to your own life. Own up to your successes as well as your failures. The whole picture is so much prettier.