Have you ever been haunted by the what ifs of your life? ( Part Two)

          I am not writing this to escape any responsibility for the demise or failure of my relationship with Warren.  In fact the opposite is true.  I am not looking to play the blame game that our society so obsesses over.  I want to find my mistakes.  At times my recounting of the events of my life it may seem I am being unreasonably hard on the people in my life.  I don’t intend to portray them in a bad light.  Maybe it is just that I can see them more clearly than I see myself.  It is so very difficult if not impossible to see ourselves as others see us.  It is too scary!  I can see little bits and pieces of myself but not the whole picture.  Perhaps it is in only in seeing the whole picture that we can understand and forgive ourselves.  Maybe this writing exercise is an attempt to see the whole picture.

The failure of my recent relationship looms large over my life.  How could I have made such a mistake again?  A nebulous and infinite array of questions has hung over my life since my divorce from Warren. I can’t shake them. 

I wonder “what if” I had made this choice instead of that.  What if I had decided not to continue a relationship with Warren after the trip?  How would my life be now?  Would I be any happier or more content?  Would I be more successful?  Would I have more and better connections to friends?  Would I feel less lonely?  Would I have made less costly emotional and financial mistakes?  Would I have experienced less stress and heartache?  I am haunted by those roads not travelled.  They keep tugging me backwards to the past and I so want to live in the present.

I can’t seem to shake it no matter how hard I try.  It even overshadows my state of contentment in my new city and with my new life.  I am haunted by this feeling that somehow my life would have turned out better or at least been easier if I had chosen a different path(s) than the one I did choose.  Of course “choice” may be the wrong word.  I tell myself everything turned out as it should be but that doesn’t stop the pull from the past. So I have embarked on this intellectual journey.  Did I make the “right” choices?  Is there a “right” choice?  How did I get to where I am?  What were the forces that lead me to choose the roads I did?  Where would I be if I had chosen differently or taken the roads not travelled?