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Oh, Life!

Do you ever stop and consider how much different your life would be if you had just made 1 different decision in your life? For some reason, I woke up this morning pondering what my life would be like today if none of that drama had gone down, and everything would have been just like I imagined it would be, and I had stayed at Huntington, and I realized that I would be an entirely different person. I never would have met the people who have changed me so much in the last two years. There would be no Catherine or Kaitlyn or Holly or Grant or Angie or Noelle in my life. The professors who I have learned the most from, like Jen and Mike and Dr. Smith and Beth... they wouldn't exist to me. My relationship with my family would be completely different. I never would have met Ben, and we never would have fallen in love. Vanessa and I wouldn't be preparing to move into our apartment together in August.

Some of the experiences that have come to define who I am never would have occurred, like assistant directing my first show with Joan and especially starting Journeys. There are even just little things that would be different. I would probably still be living in a dorm, I wouldn't have been allowed to have a single drink of alcohol. Heck! I would probably still be a performance major if I was still at Huntington! None of the pictures or posters or momentos decorating my room would be here. Very few of the faces in these pictures would mean anything to me. I would still be among the religiously devout, and the sense of self-empowerment and self-confidence I have acquired in the last two years would be non-existent. I never would have seen my dreams come true, gotten treated for my anxiety and depression, or made amends with some of the people I hurt most in high school.

Life has a funny way of working itself out. When things fell apart at Huntington, I felt completely broken and lost, and I felt like SUCH a failure. Though I knew I would apply to Ball State and come here in the fall to start over, that felt like an easy choice to me, a safe choice. I would at least have one person I knew here, Alex, and it was closer to home than Huntington, and there wasn't nearly as much pressure to be perfect at a state school. When I got to Ball State, though, I knew that I had finally come to the right place, and I will never forget the exact moment I felt that sense of belonging. It was during our production of Little Women. Maren Ritter was singing "Astonishing" and I was sitting in the audience sobbing. The people around me looked at me in utter confusion; this wasn't a sad song, so why was I crying? I was crying because I had found the place where I could be "Astonishing" and no matter how much pain it took to me get here, I still wouldn't trade places with anyone.

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