Remember when boys and girls wouldn’t touch each other because they thought the other one had cooties? Well, my 24-hour, full-of-cooties boyfriend broke up with me because I told him I didn’t want to kiss him yet. You know, the kind of kiss where your lips barely touch? Yet, he didn’t understand that, and he let me go. But can you blame me for not kissing him? The boy had cooties!

When this guy told me he didn’t want to be my boyfriend anymore, I started thinking about all the things I must have done wrong during those 24 hours and the "what ifs." What if I hadn’t told him about me not wanting to kiss him yet? What if he asked me to be his girlfriend in person instead of on MSN, and what if we actually saw each other while we were together?

I started making up scenarios in my mind about the what ifs, and how different my life would have been the years to come if we had stayed together. I am one of those weirdos who is still a hopeless romantic that believes people can stay together forever.

Now that I overcame the cootie-boy situation, I think of other "what if's." What if I had gone to a different university? What if I had decided to go to Israel instead of Philadelphia and what if my ex went to the same university as mine? What if my parents had decided to give me another name. What if this, what if that.

All the "what ifs" are messing with my head and I bet they are doing the same to yours. We focus on the things we could have done differently instead of moving ahead and learning from those moments. I believe everything happens for a reason, and overwhelming ourselves with the “what ifs” and “what-would-have-happened” is not the way of dealing with anything. Everything is either a lesson or a blessing, and you are the only one who can change the way you think so you can stop torturing yourself and start living in the present. No amount of guilt or overthinking will bring you back to those moments where the what ifs could've become the reality.