Time to Rewind My Life?

Sometimes Bad Advice is Exactly What You Need

So before we start this, you need some back story. It spans seven years but I think I can condense it down for you.

So seven years ago I graduated from high school in my small hometown. I immediately moved to the city and began attending university, pursuing an arts degree in History and Philosophy. I first lived in a pathetic little apartment close to the university, Garneau Towers. I got a job selling cell phones, before cell phones were the cool thing.

Along the way I left the job, got a girlfriend, moved, got a new job which I loved. Kept going to school, worked part time, then worked full time. Lost the girlfriend. Made friends at work. Eventually I met another girl near the end of my degree, and fell in love. Started jumping around jobs. Proposed to the girl and got married. Finally, about six months ago, we moved out to the country, only a mile from where I grew up. We were finally able to start the life we had talked about for so long. And I finally found a job close to home.

And then one day out of the blue my wife sits me down and says she isn’t happy, and she doesn’t think I’m happy either. So she is leaving. And she does. I try to convince her to stay all week. At the end of the week she comes back, takes her things, and leaves forever.

So this is where my life has ended up. Needless to say, I was pretty shocked. So was my family. No one saw it coming. No one saw the signs, if there were any.

But amidst my confusion and trying to make sense of my life without the woman I had by my side, every moment, for three years — and the woman I had planned to spend my entire life with — my sister offered me a suggestion half-jokingly. She said I should move back to the city, get an apartment back in that awful Garneau Towers apartment building, and go back to school. Restart my life. Rewind seven years.

When an event like your spouse leaving you out of the blue hits, it’s hard to tell up from down. You start questioning everything. And my sister’s advice seemed to make sense for a moment. Maybe I should start over. Everything I did over seven years, in one way or another, led to where I was. And it was feeling pretty terrible, being where I was. Maybe I did need to restart my entire adult life and go back to the beginning.

But our experiences, good or bad, make us who we are. Beginning again would erase what I have learned over those seven years. Like it or not, I have those memories and experiences, and they have changed me, for better or for worse. The good and the bad have molded me into who I am today, and truly resetting my life would be impossible.

Now is the time to harness my experiences. To look around where I am and reevaluate. To move forward, not to rewind and start over. Separating is hard; I’m discovering that first hand. And it will require time, and rebuilding. But as a coworker told me, time heals all wounds. And I am sure in time it will get easier, and my life will return to something like normal. Until then, all I can do is keep moving forward. And my sister’s bad advice, whether a joke or serious, helped me realize this. It helped crystallize what I have to do. I can’t let myself slide back and start over. I can’t change the past, and I can’t change what has happened. All I can change is where I can go from here.