No What-Ifs!

I was scrolling down twitter today and i noticed a girl’s post that i have not seen in a while. It was a link to a picture she just posted on Instagram so i went on it to see what it was because i mean, i was curious.

This girl and i were in the same dorm freshman year, one of the first people i met when i first arrived to Lexington from Nigeria. We went through rush together and even though we did not grow close through out our stay freshman year, we were happy acquaintances who smiled at each other in the hall ways, at the cafeteria or just around campus. We even followed each other on social media of course which was how i saw her twitter post.

This girl is very charismatic, she initiated conversation with me whenever we happen to be in the same place. She made me feel among during rush week even though she might not know she did all these things and lessened my nervousness of leaving home for the first time, she did.

After freshman year, i moved out of the dorms to my first apartment with a couple of girls from my sorority and i never really saw her again. She still tweeted from time to time but my timeline gets flooded so i guess i always missed her tweets.

Back to the post i saw on Instagram that has got me writing this at 3:55am at night. It was a picture of her and her boyfriend, and her caption was “we are excited to announce that we are finally registered and recognized by the Australian Government as Couple!! Best “One year anniversary in Australia” gift i could receive!! I love you so much, (her boyfriend’s name).

I was shocked, i was like wow, she is married? when did she move to Australia? Is she still going to school? Then i read her comments and she explained that they are not married yet and it was just a registration you can do in Australia so you can be allowed to stay in the country with your significant other even though you are not married.

I was happy for her of course so i liked the picture and i started looking at her other pictures and i went so far back to notice that she bought a one way ticket to Australia, is having the time of her life, met a guy she completely adores (from the look of her posts) and is traveling around the world, experiencing new cultures, making mistakes, taking the world in. I have to confess, after looking at a few pictures i became jealous. But in a good way, it just made me question a few things.

I will love to travel the world rather than be stuck trying to get an education because i want to get a job and then a family and then slave myself in the workforce before finally retiring and dying (hopefully peacefully in my bed). What if i do not want all these things? I am glad my parents are sacrificing so much for me to be in another country to get an education but i am almost 21 years old.

I want to travel the world, i feel i have met the love of my life already and i want to take him with me. I want to swim in clear waters with baby pigs, i want to dance to different kinds of music, i want to help people, i want to make an impact in the world not for going to graduate school and slaving away but for having genuine ideas that will make humanity grow, i want to make love to my boyfriend under clear skies with the stars shining down on us, i want to enjoy life and all that it offers, soak up the different cultures, meet different people and eat the different foods.

I do not want to wake up one morning and ask what if, i want to be able to wake up at 90 years old when i am too weak to do all these things and say “Yes, i have lived, there is nothing i did not do. I took over the world and enjoyed every bit of it.”