Something has been on my mind for the past week and a half. It seems so momentous now, but I know it will be a mere blip in the course of my life as I move forward.

At the beginning of junior year, I still felt like a sophomore. I was still in that awkward transition and crazy state of “ahhh! I don’t know what I’m doing with my life or what I even want to do in the future!” Right now, though, I have transcended into this mindset: so much is happening in such a short amount of time that I am forced to accept what happens and just move on with life. In other words, I have been so flustered and my schedule has been so jam-packed that being flustered and trying to keep up with my jam-packed schedule has become the norm. A day of doing completely nothing does not feel quite right.

Staying on my feet is a good thing. In the long run, we all need breaks, though. January has been a whirlwind, to say the least. Now that it is February 1, the tide of events has stemmed a bit so I can take a temporary pause and reflect on this past month.

I like to take things slowly and one at a time, similar to how I go about drinking this disgusting watermelon soup my grandmother forces me to drink. It is tolerable in individual sips, but it would knock me out if I chugged the entire bowl. I took this small-sipping approach with January. Everything was going okay–and by okay I mean no major screw-ups–until a week and a half ago when things started to actually screw up.

I guess I could give the extremely long version of what happened, but I will tell the short version: two events that meant A LOT to me were scheduled on the same day at the same time: January 31. That’s right, the LAST DAY OF JANUARY. I had survived almost the entire month of January only to find out that my biggest obstacle lay on the very last day of the month. These events were not birthday parties and vacations–they were events that required months of preparation, commitment, and (sometimes healthy, sometimes not) stress. There was absolutely no way for me to attend both, so obviously I had to choose one to attend.

These events were of equal importance to me. Choosing one had no benefit over choosing the other; in both cases, I knew it would feel like my heart had been ripped out. Okay so I might be overdramatic, but that is what I felt when I was making the decision, during the days leading up to January 31st, the day of January 31st, and right now as I am writing this. The small rational part of me knows that there was nothing I can do anymore because I could not have changed the scheduling conflict nor could I have split myself in half and attend both events. The much bigger, emotional part of me is constantly asking: what would have happened if I had chosen the other event.

Over the past few days, I have been in constant disagreement with myself, asking myself if I made the right choice. Then again, I thought to myself, we all have times like these where we are forced to make decisions we do not like to make. And either choice comes with equally heavy consequences, so we just have to suck it up and go with it. Not everyone will respect our choices, of course, but that does not matter as much as respecting ourselves. This experience will definitely not be the last gut-wrenching decision I will have to make, so it is best to take this as an opportunity to learn how to react more appropriately when I approach some sort of crossroads again.

Peace and Happy February.

Katie

*Title image is from New Orleans; the image in the post is from Bryce Canyon National Park.