I know I cannot change the past but I want to make better choices in my remaining years. I want to actually make a choice. I am not sure I did that before. I felt more buffeted around by forces and emotions that I didn’t understand and by misperceptions about myself and others. I convinced myself that none of my decisions were impulsive because I took a lot of time to analyze and think about them. I dissected the consequences, pluses and minuses in my mind of each proposed course of action, sometimes for a year or more. But I realize now that I was just rationalizing my impulsive decision. I see now that I often dismissed the voice of reason or prudence. In my loneliness over the loss of my husband, I overlooked the warning signs that this most recent relationship would never work.
What if I had decided not to marry early? What if I had decided not to marry my ex-husband? What if I had married instead my first serious boyfriend? What if I had decided to seriously pursue a career? What if I decided to delay or not have children? You see what I have been doing to myself these last few years. I can’t live in the present as I am continually dragged back to the past. Sometimes I feel paralyzed to act because I recognize that I have made so many “bad” choices in my life. How do I move forward? I think I can only do that by coming to terms with my past.
I don’t have any idea if I can answer all or even any of those questions. The” what ifs” are infinite. I know that I have to try if I am going to find any peace. And above all I want to make peace with my life and my choices. Only then will I make peace with where I am right now and begin to live more in the moment. I will keep my eye on the future –where I am going but with more of a sense of trust that I am making choices and those “choices” are taking me where I want to go.
I have tried but I can’t find peace in superficial answers or in busy activities. So I have to venture down this difficult path that is strewn and overgrown with “what ifs”. I reluctantly look down the roads not travelled. I try to imagine my life if I had made another choice. I imagine I would be happier, more successful or in a better place. But I don’t really know that. That is all fantasy and I don’t want to base my journey on fantasy and imaginings. I only really know the outcome of the roads I have travelled. And so I decide to embark on a journey to review the roads I have travelled in hopes I may come to terms and make peace with the roads I didn’t travel.
This is not meant to be a comprehensive or chronological recounting of my life. This is the story of an emotional journey, not a physical one. Emotions or should I say emotional memories don’t lend themselves to any kind of order. They perhaps are better told as they are remembered, that is, as a series of unconnected vignettes. Their formation and experience is a process and not a very orderly one at that. Emotions surface at inopportune times. Emotional growth does not progress in any chronological order. Oftentimes an experience will have an impact on us only many years after it has happened.
As I look into the mirror I see the face of a middle aged women staring back at me. The image reminds me so of the passage of all the years. It frightens me that so much of my life is now behind me. Why did I do the things I did? If I understand that will it make any difference in my life as I look toward the future? In the end will my life have any meaning?
I started on my life journey with no roadmap. It might be more accurate to say I had small bits and pieces of a roadmap that were unconnected and huge pieces were missing. In some of my darkest hours I would sustain myself by saying if my children learned from and were able to avoid even some of the mistakes of my life it would all be worth it. I hope in my life and with this journal I have provided them with at least a rudimentary roadmap for their journey. It would give my life some meaning.
