What if...?

I find myself lately asking a lot of what ifs. It was spurred by an evening approximately a month ago (yes, I am behind on blogging).

I was asked to sub for a vball team on a Thursday night, no problem. Funnily enough, everybody on the team is from the neighbourhood that we had moved away from almost 25 years ago. At the time I was 7, and I remember being completely devastated by the whole ordeal. I was upset for weeks, if not months. There's a photo of me on moving day, sitting in a corner crying my eyes out!

It was the only place I knew. All my friends were there, and we did everything together. Swimming lessons, skating lessons, boy scouts, soccer... we would ride our bikes around the neighbourhood and climb the fences in the backyards. There was a real sense of community there. In the neighbourhood we moved to, forget neighbourhood, there wasn't even roads built yet!

After vball was over, we all went to the bar. It was like I was entrenched in an alternate universe where what may have happened if we hadn't moved. While none of these people were my friends or even in my grade back in the early 80s, they all came from the same place. They had grown up with each other for the past 20+ years. They all went to the same barbershops, ate at the same restaurants, played on the same baseball teams, even knew random people at the bar, it was like walking into Cheers! I told one of the girls that I use to live there and had moved away. When I told her it was to Mississauga, the first thing she said was "yeah, nobody is 'from' Mississauga". That wrapped it up quite succinctly. It made me think of all the things I missed out on by my family moving. So much so, in fact it made me quite bitter inside.

This stuck with me for days, if not weeks. It made me wonder how my life would've been different if we had not moved away when I was a kid. It started making me wonder about big turning points in my life. Events that drastically changed the course of my life. How would my life be different if certain things had or had not happened. I know I've been trying very hard not to live in the past and dissect all the maybes and what ifs, which is a HUGE flaw of mine, but I really couldn't help it.

1) Moving Day
As outlined above. The area of Toronto I use to live in was a fully established, long standing neighbourhood.  My mom actually spent her teens and went to high school in a neighbourhood that was close by. I was in all sorts of community activities when I lived there. When we moved, there wasn't even grass for the first year or two, let alone a swimming pool, community center, library, etc... The elementary school I was enrolled in had a total of 150-200 students, each grade having only 1 class of no more than 25 students. By contrast, the first elementary school I had in Mississauga had over 5 times that amount of students.

2) What's Your Major?
I had a pretty tough time choosing what I wanted to study in university. I applied for 5 different programs, CompSci, Accounting, Business, Physics, and my eventual major Graphic Design. I only applied for Graphic Design because I enjoyed Visual Art and a friend of a friend in my art class told me that's what he was doing. Really had no idea what Graphic Design was, but I wanted to keep doing art. In fact, initially I was rejected by my program and I had decided to take Accounting/Business at another university, until a week later when a spot opened for me in the Graphic Design program.

That would've been huge. I could've been an accountant. I would've lived away from home for university. A completely different set of experiences, during a formative time. I know one thing for sure, I wouldn't be wearing jeans, tshirt and boat shoes to work like I am right now.

3) Cheater, Cheater...
As I mentioned in previous posts, there was a girl in university that I have recently become reacquainted with. We were pretty close friends and for quite awhile I was heavily debating whether to leave my now ex gf for her. She has all the aspects that I was looking for that my ex did not, but had no ambition or drive. In hindsight, that was probably less of a deal breaker than being anti-social.

I have no idea what would've happened if I had decided to break up with my ex back then and go for it with the other girl. Maybe we'd still be together. Maybe we would've broken up shortly after. Dum dum dum!

4) The Break Up
Of course this would end up here. Let's say my ex gf and I ended up getting married? Would I have eventually succumbed to the circumstances? Would I have been stuck in an unhappy family situation? Would we have gotten divorced?