Thoughts down the lane :)

As I sit and go through various photographs, trying to pick out the ones I want to put up on my desktop background, I take a slow stroll down memory lane. Joy, pain, sorrow, excitement, love, shyness, there is so much captured in all those photos. As I look at each one, a whole thread of memories follow. At one moment, I'm smiling, showing all my teeth and the next, I have a silent tear rolling down. I think of who I have been and who I am now. I'm amazed at the way I have evolved and grown. Painful memories suddenly don't hurt that much and what I thought was the worst moment in my life at some point, seem very funny to me now. As I smile and flip through the pages of the album, I feel like I have gotten into a time machine and I am going through my life all over again.

      There are times in this journey which makes me feel like hitting myself across the head for being so stupid and at other times, I just silently watch myself feel the pain and silently cry in the bathroom and, to say honestly I'm speechless and I wonder "Did I really have to go through all that for things that were just not worth it?". But before I have time to answer that question, I'm distracted by watching myself laugh, enjoy and love unconditionally. I smile, but somehow, its nowhere even remotely close to the laughter that I see. What happened to it? What happened to that unconditional love? What happened to the wholehearted joy?

I suddenly feel empty. With my head churning and my heart ready to burst with emotion, I come to the end of my journey and land at the.......present. As I sit there, with a zillion thoughts running through my mind and infinite emotions ebbing and flowing in my heart, I realise something I knew all along. Everything that I went through, the joy, laughter, pain, sorrow, love and everything else is what has brought me to where I am today. And suddenly, I'm no longer worried about what happened to my laughter or why I put myself through so much of pain in the past. All I know is, where I am right now is where exactly I'm supposed to be. And so what if it's not a very joyful time? I know I'll pull through to better days, because experiencing what I'm going through is what will lead me to what I'm looking for.

Oh, what I'm looking for? I have no idea, but I know that when I get it, I'll realise I wanted it all the while.

"Welcome to wherever you are,
This is your life; you made it this far.

you gotta believe,
That right here, right now, you're exactly where you're supposed to be,
Welcome to wherever you are."

;)