Troubled, But Not Unbroken

Have you ever been completely knocked off your feet by some small thing that completely changes how you view your seemingly perfect life? Maybe your life isn’t actually perfect, maybe it’s just very pleasant and you are totally content with how everything is unfolding around you. Then an honest answer to a simple question, or a returned email, makes you question a choice you made, or decided not to make, everything unravels and you wonder what your life would be like if you had done ‘this’ or ‘that’ instead.

You start picturing how your life would be different if you had made that move, had made that phone call, that trip, that choice. Would you be able to tell someone that perfect, successful thing that you can’t tell him or her right now? Would that honest answer be the same? Would there even be a question to answer? You go back a year, two years, three, and then back to just yesterday. Should I have? Could I have? I would have been happy. I would have been successful, on top of the world. Then this bad thing wouldn’t have happened, this bridge wouldn’t be burned or even a little rickety. I wouldn’t have had to suffer through this pain or that stress. This bump in the road would have been smaller, or completely avoided.

So why didn’t I choose the other path? What did I see in the road that made me walk the other way? If it was so simple to pick this life, why was it too hard to choose the other? Or was it hard to choose the other? It shouldn’t have been. It wasn’t. I missed out. I turned the wrong way. How can I go back, where do I fix this? The answer isn’t really clear. There’s another decision, another choice. Stay or go? Go, but how? What would I be missing? Who would I be missing?

Then things start to disappear from your picture. If you had done ‘this’ or ‘that’ instead, you would have never had that one experience, which lead to that realization. You wouldn’t have grown in this way. Laughed at that moment, cried with this one, then learned from them both. Yes, something else would have made you smile and think. A different lesson learned, different trouble, different pain. Maybe you would be better, maybe you would be worse. You definitely wouldn’t have this life, this knowledge, this person and this love. Could you live without it and without them? Now, after you’ve held it in your hand, could you live without it? Can you guarantee that you would actually be happier, more successful, on top of the world?

You realize that you can’t guarantee anything. Not then and not now. You can change something and try to get back to where you think you would have been, but it wouldn’t be easy. It would be hard, and you might be giving something up. But instead of knowing you did make the right decision, you just hope you did. You have to believe that you did, even if there is a small part of you that wonders, and will always wonder. It would be terrible to give some of this up. Now that you have this life, how could you live without it?

There’s still something in that returned email that aches. Something totally correct in that honest answer, and so very valid in the question you asked. It makes your eyes go fuzzy while you drift away and think, “Maybe…” But there is no time machine. You will have to live with the questions, keep it small, keep it back. Some of it is not worth anymore thoughts. It will always be there, but just as a fragment of the life you may or may not have had, that may or may not have been better than this one.

You just have to use the rest of it, the changeable aspects of your current situation, to push you forward and to be the reason why you get up in the morning. It IS the thing that makes you come back to the desk everyday and work. Reminds you to bite your tongue and smile when the She-Devil parades her accomplishments in front of you. IT was why you asked that question, because you KNOW there is more to do. To get to the place you want to be, to be successful without loosing anything, something needs to be done. You just don't know exactly what it is yet.