You can’t change the past. And, even if you could, would you?

If you only have a minute…

In this blog post, I reflect on past decisions and relationships, and wonder if I would change anything if given the chance. I explore different timelines and decisions that led to where I am today, and ultimately conclude that every choice, no matter how insignificant, played a role in shaping my life. While I may occasionally wonder what could have been if I had made different choices, I am content with where I am now and the person I have become.

Have more than a minute? Here you go:

It’s the spring of 2006, and I got a strange email from someone who reads my blog. She tells me she is also interested in public health, and she has been reading my journey through the MPH program at George Washington. I thank her for reading, but I don’t leave it at that. That April, we go to a museum exhibit in Philadelphia, where she is from. “Have you ever been to the Mütter Museum,” she says. ”Haven’t heard of it,” I reply. ”It’s this really cool museum downtown inside an old building from like the 1700s. They have all sorts of medical oddities there.” While the part about the medical oddities does catch my attention, I am more interested in getting to know her better and figuring out how to do so when I live three hours away in Waynesboro. ”We should go sometime,” I say, hoping to see her again.

We end the date in her Jeep, making out to the sound of a local radio station playing R&B. I look at my watch and decide I have to get going. I have to work at eight the following morning, and I still had three hours to drive. It was almost midnight. We agree to go to the Mütter soon, but we don’t. I see her again in person again in May, at a cross-country adventure race for which I foolishly sign up to impress her. We chat at the beginning of the race, and then we don’t talk again for two years. By then, I had already met the love of my life. The “Philly Girl” timeline expired.

It’s July 6, 2000, and dad and I just arrived in Waynesboro, Pennsylvania. We had been driving since Monday, and I was supposed to start a job on July 10 at the local hospital. They had recruited me through an online service where I uploaded my résumé at a time when not many people did that. The recruiter from Harrisburg called me early one morning and asked if I could fly up for an interview the next day. I did, and the lab manager offered me the job right then and there at the end of the interview. “Just like that, huh?” my dad asked. ”Yep. Just like that.”

We drove around Waynesboro to get to know the town. I’d be living there for what I expected would be a while, so we drove to see the parks, the schools, the grocery stores, and the restaurants. One restaurant that caught my attention was “Los Gringos.” It advertised Mexican food, so dad and I had to check it out. We walked in, sat down, and ordered our meals. It was the usual fare for any Mexican-style restaurant far, far from the border: Beans, rice, some sort of protein, a tortilla, and some shredded lettuce with tomatoes. As we were halfway through our meal, the server showed up with a little bowl of corn tortilla chips covered in sugar and cinnamon. “I didn’t order these,” I said. ”They’re complementary,” she answered. “They’re called buñuelos.” ”No, they’re not,” I answered her with a smile. She just turned around and walked away.

A different server took over for the rest of our meal. Dad wondered what happened, why the first server seemed upset. We left a $20 bill for a tip and left.

Six months later, the first server showed up at the emergency room at the hospital. She was in nursing school, and she was doing a clinical rotation there. Someone at the ER was related to her in some way, so they were also testing her to hire her. They usually did not hire new nursing graduates, but I guess a special dispensation was made because of her connections. Not that I’m complaining.

She was easy on the eyes and checked-off most of the attributes I associate with beauty, including brains. So I made an effort to go to the ER as much as possible when working the slow overnight shifts, hanging out and talking to her and the others. One night, I asked her for her number, and she gave it to me.

The next few weeks would be a little convoluted. She told me about recently breaking up with her high school sweetheart, so she was reluctant to date someone else. “Part of me hopes he’ll come to his senses and leave his current girlfriend to return to me,” she told me. Perhaps stupidly, I told her I’d be patient. We went to the movies, to a friend’s music gigs, and for some good conversations at a Waffle House. One night, while leaving a pub in Gettysburg, I reached over and brought her toward me. I kissed her, and she went with it.

On the ride back to her place, she told me she wasn’t a “PDA kind of girl.” When I dropped her off, I kissed her one more time, but she didn’t seem as interested.

She called me the following morning, asking me if I could come over to her apartment. I was over in a flash. We made out on her couch for a while before she suddenly stopped. She started crying. She could not forget about her ex, and she said it wouldn’t be fair to me if she had feelings for him. I agreed, but I was seething on the inside. All those times we went out. All that fun we had. All those conversations. All that was done and over with. It felt like a breakup without it being an actual breakup. “I could have loved you,” I said as I walked out.

The “Sunshine” timeline fizzled shortly thereafter.

It’s 1998, and I’m in college. A girl I chased after in high school has reconnected with me, and we’re hanging out at my apartment. We’re going to a concert that night along with my cousins. “So you want to work in the hospital, but you don’t want to be a doctor?” she asked. ”I mean, maybe I’ll go to medical school, but that’s not the main path,” I tell her. “It’s an alternative.”
”You’d make a good doctor,” she said. “In fact, do you want to play doctor instead of going to the concert?” she asked with a coy smile on her face.

The human brain is a weird thing. On the one hand, it was flooding with oxytocin and many other substances to reward the physical me that I was on a couch with a young and fertile female. Hormones raging, I wanted to tell her that, yes, we should stay in my apartment and do all sorts of things… Some of which were prohibited in the Great State of Texas at that time. But not my brain. My brain wanted me out of El Paso. My brain did the quick math and realized I had no condoms anywhere within walking distance, and that the odds were low that she was on any kind of birth control. My brain reached out and took her hand away from my pants and made me jump up. “So… We ready to go listen to some tunes?” I asked.

We had fun at the concert. We couldn’t keep our hands off each other during and afterward, but I drove her home. We went out on a couple of dates, but nothing at my apartment or her parent’s house. She finally told me she was looking for more, especially since she wanted out of her house. “I can tell you’re not that into me,” she said.
”It’s not that. Don’t get me wrong,” I said. “You’re pretty, and I’ve liked you since high school, but…”
”But?”
”But I don’t want anything serious right now, and I don’t want to be a teenage dad.” Lord knows there were enough of those in my extended family.

We talked on the phone once or twice. And I did see her when I visited El Paso in 2003. But the “High School Crush” timeline went nowhere.

And that’s just the timelines of three of the maybe dozen women I dated before I met my wife. There’s the “Green-eyed Monster” timeline, the “You’re How Old?!” timeline, and the “There’s No Such Thing As A Hypoallergenic Cat” timeline. That last one was a doozy.

There are also all the timelines generated from the decisions I had to make about my professional development. Many people in my life did not expect me to go to college. They expected me to go into any of the many menial jobs people like me were recruited to, not because we could not perform well in college, but because of the color of our skin and our national origin. If I had a dollar for each time, I’ve been asked if I’m for hire at places like Lowe’s or Home Depot.

I wonder if it’s because of my age (and accompanying maturity) that I have less regrets of the decisions I made. Or maybe it is that I am in a good spot in life, so I don’t feel the need to feel regretful. I do know that some decisions I made that felt the most consequential were not done alone. Some of them were done for me, such as when my cousin gave me money to pay the application fee at UTEP when I asked him if I should apply. Or when mom and dad sent me to live with my aunt in El Paso, when they wanted me to have a better education than what I was getting in Mexico.

Reflecting on the different timelines and decisions that led to where I am today, I am struck by the realization that every choice I made, no matter how insignificant it may have seemed at the time, played a role in shaping my life. While I may occasionally wonder what could have been if I had made different choices, I am content with where I am now and the person I have become. In the end, the past cannot be changed, but we can learn from it and use those lessons to shape our future.

Thank you for reading. Please check out more of my thoughts over on my Medium.com blog at: https://medium.com/@epiren

Or listen to my ramblings on the Epidemiological Podcast: https://anchor.fm/rene-najera

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