Nineteen years ago my life veered off course. I made a choice and I stood by it longer than I should have. But I stood by my choice and saw it to the end of the road. I can do many things but when the earth beneath me collapsed I did not have the ability to construct a bridge, the foundation just wasn't there. Earthquakes will do that, especially the emotional ones.
I've kept pretty silent about my divorce except for a few trusted people (you know who you are and I can't ever thank you enough). I joke that I lost custody of all of my friends in the divorce. I joke about a lot of things when it comes to the "d" word. It's what I do. The truth is, it would be harmful to my kids if they ever found out what really happened, if they ever heard my side of the story. So I didn't tell it. It was better for me to start over - as much as I could. With kids you don't have a lot of options that way, when the other person wants to be involved. We'll just drop that line of discussion because it will get me off topic.
The point of this post is to explain how things change and how you either embrace it and grow from it or become warped and stunted. I chose to embrace it and grow. Again, quite funny because I found myself growing back to that person I was more than nineteen years ago. I reunited with parts of myself that I'd suppressed or forgotten. I started to write again. A lot. I started to teach myself new things, to experiment with skills I found intriguing. Little by little I reassembled myself. Piece by piece I put myself back together, discarding things that no longer fit who I wanted to be. And you know what, I like myself again. I don't love myself, I have some work to do to get there but I found some pretty solid foundations and I'm pretty confident this road is the one I was meant to travel.
It's funny how memories come back, how things (like songs) that once meant one thing have come to mean something else entirely.
This is one of those songs.
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