Re-Live the Past

Is there an age or year of your life you would re-live?

Daily writing prompt

This is one of those difficult questions that requires a little too much self-examination. A little more than I am willing to do at 6:39am on a Saturday morning at least.

A year I would re-live… The answer, of course, is none of them. It is also all of them. The catch is that I would re-live them all only if I could do so without changing anything. There was a time in my past when I wanted to go back and change everything, especially myself. I was basically cripplingly shy and afraid of everything. Socially speaking I was useless and romantically… well, that was literally non-existent.

Then in April of 2007 I went on a first date with someone remarkable. On some strange subconscious level I sort of said fuck it and got over all of my hangups and some how, magically, that first date turned into my first relationship which then turned into my marriage. At that point it occurred to me that all of the problems I dealt with before April 2007 were just steps on the path that lead me to the place… to the me… that I needed to be. Those experiences made me someone that Jen could find value in. Someone that Jen could fall in love with and marry and allow to be a step father to her two children.

That is why I don’t want to re-live even a single day, because doing so runs the risk of changing the eventual outcome. That is literally the last thing in the universe that I would ever want. I wouldn’t mind observing the me that I used to be, but I wouldn’t want to do so in a way that would affect any decisions I had ever made. I would especially like to re-observe everything post April 2007 as that would allow me to see myself becoming that one thing I had always believed I would never be… happy. That’s a movie I wouldn’t mind seeing.

So the short answer to what year or age would I want to re-live is none. As hard as it is to believe, I think I got it right on the first try. I mean, how weird is that?