Feeling Once, Feeling Again

We can look for all of the wonderful reasons to stay in relationships or we can look for excuses to leave. Plowing through each of our emotions, every one of our intellectualizations and justifications, we have reached yet another fork in life’s road.

Take it.

Are we going to take the left fork, the right fork or are we turning around and hightailing back to where we came from? The place we came from no longer exists because life has changed as our lives have progressed. Life has changed as we became another five minutes older, as the world kept going on regardless of our plans for it. Turning around and running back to where we assumed life was comfortable is the worst of all possible choices, no matter what we suppose either fork ahead in the road might bring. The place behind us no longer exists.

What we once felt about the life we lived in our personal histories is over. No matter how wonderful or magical we think our lives were, they were different than we remembered. The legends of our past are stories. Whether accurate or not, they are memories of days gone by. However much we might assume those memories are accurate is of little consequence.

What matters now, today, in this moment, is where the fork in the road has brought us.

All of us know one or more persons in the worst of all conceivable circumstances. Once upon a time their lives appeared to us to be charmed. Everything they touched turned to gold when it seemed like everything we touched turned…