Choices Made & Prices Paid

As I said in a previous post, I have been pondering the concept of perseverance recently and despite my best efforts to live in the present I have found myself thinking, more and more, on the past and the roads I’ve traveled this last decade.

It is human nature I guess, the need to play Monday morning quarterback and re-hash what can not be undone, pulling it apart to see if you can capture the moment the thread of your life seemed to unravel in your hands.

Well and so, it appears that until I try to give shape to that time and that girl I will not be able to forgive her for her follies and let her fade away.  Odd isn’t it to be haunted by yourself and not at all a comfortable existence.  I’m not a good person, but then so few of us are truly if we are honest with ourselves but I am a better person than who I once was so I will try to find the words and give voice to that which is determined to be heard.

The paradox here is that the choices made in the past are not ones the person I am today would make BUT I am the person I am today because of the choices I made back then.  So how to reconcile the two so that I can enjoy the life I fought so long to create.  It is there I think the problem really lies, in that word ‘enjoy‘.  Do I deserve to be released from the pain or must I live a shadow existence, properly penitent so that all will know that I truly understand the pain that I caused others?

If it were only myself that I damaged it would not be an issue really but like so many things in life our actions affect those around us and in my case I caused harm to one completely innocent whose existence was mine to guard, nurture and love.

Life can surely be conflicted at times because it is here that another paradox exists.  I cannot stay sane, I doubt anyone could, unless I leash the memories and the pain yet I fear that by doing that I will be somehow be condoning or excusing myself and in doing so will lose the chance to build a bridge with one I harmed, if they believe me unrepentant.

Some deeds have such weight to them that at times you can feel your entire frame shuddering from the pressure and as such I’ve come to understand that to walk the roads that life lays before us there must be balance, a price shall we say for each choice.  My choice now is not to buckle and to do that I need to shed much that I have carried with me for so long.

All my life I have understood the concept of what people perceive is what people believe and so much of what went wrong comes from choices based on maintaining the ‘appearance‘ of things rather than the reality of it.  Pride, such pride and false pride at that, I had that I, in my fear and blindness, destroyed everything I wished to preserve.  It wasn’t until I lost everything that I realized that appearances are only that and that another’s perception of me should not be the measure by which I choose.

So I will talk of things past, more than that I will write of it, forsaking the last of the fear masked as pride I did not realize I still carried until quite recently.  I’m not going back to childhood, adolescence and early adulthood to discuss the whys and wherefores of how I came to come to crisis.  No I’m going to start when the thread started to unravel but could have still been stopped if I had, had the courage to reach out and tell someone what was happening rather than act in fear born of pride to hide any evidence [or so I thought] that anything was wrong.

To say this in truth is what I wish.

 

This may take two posts perhaps even three but it needs to be done as I will not sacrifice what chance I have for happiness to ghosts of choices past nor will I risk the opportunity to alleviate the hurt of one and acknowledge the debt owed to others.

I will see you tomorrow as tonight I pay a visit to the past and gather what is needed to lay these ghosts to rest.  So goodnight and I wish you a more restful evening than mine shall be but hopefully when this is done I will be able to truly say that the past no longer has a lien on my life.