the lonely "if only"

The long-anticipated day has arrived: moving day! I am all settled in my new apartment in St. Louis Park, Minnesota. I've been waiting for this day for two years, and it finally arrived!

Over the last few months I've thought a lot about my first apartment in the big city. In the grand scheme of life, it's one move to one apartment with one roommate out of many, many living experiences. It's a big deal to me now for many reasons.

As the summer wore on, I found myself day-dreaming about how 'perfect' life would be if I could just leave Vermillion...leave the farm...put down roots. Move on to the next stage of life.

It was fun to dream about it, but every time I found myself going down the lonely "if only" road, I reined in my thoughts like Pa Ingalls trying to keep his team of horses from speeding downhill out of control. There's a sentence I've never typed before...

I so wanted to believe the "life would be perfect if only ---" thoughts that were circling in my head. If only I moved to my apartment, if only my support was raised, if only I had more money in the bank, if only I had a husband/boyfriend/merely a potential date sometime.

Silly, really. Life won't be magical and happy and candy and flowers and rainbows when I achieve the next milestone in life. The milestones are important, but they are dots on a line. It's what happens in life in between the dots that matters the most.

Tomorrow marks the beginning of the line after the 'first apartment on staff/in the Cities' dot. The thousands of little choices may not seem like a big deal, but there are several within that thousand that will create and build momentum for many things to come in my future.

Good-bye, lonely "if only's." I don't need you anymore.