Hot Tub Time Machine

I must be the only person in the world that cried at the end of Hot Tub Time Machine. I sat there with my husband and friend laughing at me in an understanding way as I poured out my feelings of bewilderment and regret. How was I sitting on my sofa 2 days past my 34th birthday, having recently survived 2 strokes, 4 pancreatitis hospitalizations and a debilitating virus under my belt, with a mysterious neurological condition still plaguing my present (Fibromyalgia)? I flashed back to my own high-school and college years and marveled at the road I have traveled. Through the result of a wild and unstable upbringing, this intelligent and under-challenged joven began self-medicating at the crest of puberty, only slowing down after my first near-death experience at age 28. I was a wild and daring child, always pushing the envelope of acceptable. I put my parents through hell and strove to define myself in the extremes during my teenage years. I was on alcohol and drugs and having sex and breaking curfew and sneaking out and was willfully disobedient. How they still love me is only by the grace of God, that unconditional-love parent thing or something. Thankfully my family had the foresight to encourage a trip to Europe the summer between my junior and senior years of high-school, a trip that saved my life. It gave me exposure to the world, different languages, cultures, ways of living, perceptions, experiences...a whole different future. I went home with a stick up my ass, thumbing my nose at my friends running around middle-class suburbia in their cigarette-smoke steeped flannel shirts, getting high at their Nirvana grunge kegger parties. I thought I was so beyond them. I was worldly now, I had tasted it and wanted more.

I entered my senior year of high school actually wanting to know some people at my 10-year reunion and stepped a bit away from my wayward party friends, joining yearbook and hanging out with kids my own age. I went to Senior Ball and did all those quintessential high-school things memories are made of. I found my way to college and by then had stepped off the drug train, but indulged in alcohol and weed to a severe excess (it was college, after all). This continued on until pancreatitis caught my attention. Since then it has been a constant battle to allow myself to feel and survive the emotions without rushing to dull the pain, the sheer pain of what simply feeling means to me.

So as I watched this group of jack-ass guys, miserable 20 years after youth had launched, bumbling around back in time like moronic teenagers, seeing how much what was becomes what is, I became overwhelmed with feelings of regret and remorse. Have I done this to myself? Did I cause all of these serious health problems during my youth of excess that are now manifesting themselves on my still very young body? If so, knowing what I know now, would I have done it any different? So as the tears sprung I poured out my heart. I know the 1 right thing I have done in my life was marry my husband, and that relationship was born of this youth I want so badly to regret, to blame. As I settled down I concluded that no, most likely I would not have done 1 damn thing different. Youth is dumb, pain is real, and all I can do now is pray that by the grace of God I can find that path They created me to follow, step on and go for that ride.

Thanks for joining,
Leah