“I was never one to patiently pick up broken fragments and glue them together and tell myself that the mended whole was as good as new. What is broken is broken—and I’d rather remember it as it was at its best than mend it and see the broken places as long as I lived…I’m too old to shoulder the burden of constant lies that go with living in polite disillusionment.” ~Rhett Butler, “Gone with the Wind”

…so that’s where i find myself. after another trip home for thanksgiving, i find myself in this weird area of hypotheticals. what if i hadn’t (insert random situation here)? it’s such an interesting place to be in; but one that is very difficult as well. this life that i’ve created for myself has been born out of pain and despair; out of faith and hope; out of a desire for more, not just for me- but for those around me.

in some ways, we create our realities- we become what we desire, or as others might say “we’re a product of our environment”. i’m certain that everything in my life has been divinely and masterfully put together by God, and that my steps have been ordered to get me to this point where i am now, which is only piece of where i’m going. knowing all that doesn’t make it any easier to deal with the potential possibilities that exist or did exist. i’m sinking in my hypotheticals and struggling to swim in my reality. in short, it’s too much.

as stevie wonder would say, “i’m living just enough for the city.” as i heard on desperate housewives, “i have everything i’ve ever wanted but i wanted all the wrong things.” my life is changing rapidly, and i’m trying to hold on to everything i’ve ever known and still become who i’m destined to be. perhaps i’m fighting a losing battle. in the end, i just want to be me.

“I prefer to be true to myself, even at the hazard of incurring the ridicule of others, rather than to be false, and to incur my own abhorrence.”
-Frederick Douglass

Ah, but we die to each other daily.
What we know of other people
Is only our memory of the moments
During which we knew them.
And they have changed since then.
To pretend that they and we are the same
Is a useful and convenient social convention
Which must sometimes be broken.
We must also remember
That at every meeting we are meeting a stranger.
~t.s. eliot