After graduating high school, I used to visit home from college and curl up in bed with my old journals. I would read about nights I broke curfew and thought it was funny, skating miles and miles just to get ‘hot now’ donuts at Krispy Kreme and old and now meaningless moments with young crushes who exited life as quickly as they entered. It felt carefree, it felt fun and it felt so far from a life that was mine. I didn’t love college, I was a little bit lost, and I kept wondering if my best years were behind me. Had I “peaked” in high school? Would I ever really feel like myself again?
Now that I am in the thick of raising Hudson, I can’t help but wonder if I was wrong all along, and THESE are actually the best years of my life. We’re happy enough, Hudson is finally at the age where we can enjoy a lot of the hard work that we put in and the mundane is so exciting that I wake up energized every day- Even on nights where Hudson is teething and I don’t get much sleep. Other moms always tell me that they miss the time when their babies were young, and while I try my best to enjoy every moment, good and bad, I grasp onto them tightly as well.
It seems like every year, decade, minute and month is good for its own set of reasons. I see my parents, now free and childless again, living life according to their own rules for the first time in 20-something years and they seem really happy. Maybe it’s all different kinds of happiness, and the true lesson is learning how to love the moment we’re in and the stage we’re in. But even so, I am sure that at the end of life, everyone looks back and has their BEST years or their FAVORITE times, and I am worried that these are mine.
Do you think these are your best years? Does such a thing as “best years” even exist?