all the things left behind

when I get introspective, I get sad. Is that the way it's supposed to be? the greatest changes come from pain. the longest-lasting ones, too. so when I think back, it's to meditate on the things that have hurt me rather than the good that has occurred.
it's the good that makes the pain so much worse. the break ups with shiny and ex-otter would not have been so painful if they hadn't been directly preceded by an intense closeness brought about by death. love does not overcome all obstacles. sometimes love is the obstacle.

it's hard not to think back over this past year and wince. it's hard not to miss shiny. it's hard not to hate him. it fades, sure, but the image remains. the dreams I had for us still haunt me but they're like a quote taken out of context. when I look at the entire picture, at the future I had planned, I can see that it would have just been me dragging him along. and he would have gone with it because it was something to do. and when what I wanted overwhelmed what he was comfortable doing, he would have left, just like he left me after my mom died. I still wonder if it would have been better for me if I'd gone to the hospital alone the second time instead of convincing him to come. I still wonder a lot of things. but these are thoughts better left to rot and die, like others before them.

I have a whole compost heap of dreams that I created with other people, or for other people, of lives that died when we parted. somewhere, I'm living those. somewhere, I'm still with my ex-husband, or buttercup, or shiny, or Pants decided to get his head out of his ass, or I never went vegan and therefore found my dating pool sufficiently enriched, or I stopped dating males completely, or I never left PA or I went to DE instead of RI or my mom never died, or any of a number of divergent paths led somewhere that I, me, this me, did not go. could not go. would not go. somewhere, I'm in CA. somewhere, I'm in Chicago. somewhere, I just stayed. somewhere, I died.

all of these options, always options. and the opportunities left behind decompose when I chose something else.
when I chose someone else.
when I chose somewhere else.

I still feel this barrier between me and the rest of the world. I am still living every life that I could have, and none of them, all at once. until I can let go of all those paths, I can't walk fully on this one.
until my feet can firmly feel where they are, I won't really be anywhere.
somewhere, somewhen, somewho, somehow.

always this has been my dilemma: how to let go of the past and focus on where I am now instead of where I could have been.