Sometimes, I don’t want my articles to be so structured and formatted. Odyssey is meant for a free flow of thoughts, so this week I decided to just sit down and write about everything on my mind and it happens to be about making life decisions.

How do you know if you made the right decision? If you think about it, your life simply boils down to many decisions and you never really know if the path you took was the right one. But if you look back, you know you can’t change anything after you make that choice. You are forced to adapt to the ripple effects of events that follow it. So at that point what do you do? Do you accept the past? How can you accept the past when in the back of your head you always know there is a way your life could have played out differently? Those people in your life that walked out, think about what would have happened if they didn’t. It’s so hard to wrap your head around that fact that you have to learn to let people, places and memories go.

The hard part is knowing which memories are worth keeping. Reflecting back who are those people that are always there for you? Who tried their hardest to support you and understand exactly what you are going through? Those people you so badly try to change to be what you want them to be, they won’t change. This is something else that can be hard to accept. People are pretty set in their ways and if they don’t care about you enough, then they won’t try to hear you out. When you look back at the end of your life, think about who you want standing there until the very end. A person who cares about you will make you their everything. They will want to see you as much as they can. They will want to see you at your worst and your best of times. They will drop everything they are doing just to make sure that you are OK. And when you tell them that you’re “OK,” they know exactly if you are or not.

Life is a waiting game. You can’t plan for anything. So where do you put your trust? In anticipation. As indefinite as that is, you don’t really have any other option. All you can do is trust. Trust in your life and that you end up where you’re meant to be. If only that path meant all “smiles and rainbows.” This just isn’t how it happens though. There are going to be challenges and things that block you from getting what you want and where you want to be. You can’t exactly know what you want, though. You might not know exactly what’s best for you. In the end you have to know that everything happens for a reason -- it's cliché, but the most common phrase for a reason. You are going to get hurt, and hurt people. It’s how it has to happen.