I feel like a totally changed man
First off, I want to say that I've had few complaints about my life over the years. I've always tried to live well, follow the rules and take good care of those I care about, which mostly tends to come back at me. Most of the closest people in my life, at least, have been pretty good to me overall. And life itself has been pretty good, and I've had a lot to be thankful for over the years. In most important ways, I've always kind of considered myself one of the lucky ones.
But sometimes, for whatever reasons, things just kind of start not going according to plan. Things come up unexpectedly, and you don't know how to deal with them, but you've got to, and you don't get a hell of a lot of time to sit and think about how; you're forced to just pick a choice from a list of whatever your options seem to be, and go with it, and hope it's right. And sometimes, you just jump at one choice because your gut tells you to, and even as you go with it, you can feel that it probably wasn't the right one, but it's too late to backpaddle your way out of it, so you're stuck following through on it. And a lot of times, there's just plain no good choice or solution to something, no matter how hard you hash it over, or how many times. So you've got no choice but to go with the least worst one out of the bunch.
This is life. It's normal, and that's kind of the way it goes for all of us. And if we're lucky, everything somehow works out and comes out okay in the end. But for a lot of us, it doesn't end up that way. Sometimes it's fate taking a hand in things, sometimes it's a series of our own bad choices, or those of the people in our lives, but somehow, everything starts taking a big, huge turn south, and there's no coming back, no matter what we seem to do. And like it or not, we sometimes end up losing everything we once cared about, and growing apart from the people we cared about, if not gradually coming to feel nothing but contempt for each other. And when we look back, of course, we always see some things that we could of and should of done differently, better ways we could of handled some things, or worst of all, that we ended up taking people we always cared about for granted. Or else, finding out the hard way that they took us for granted, and may never have cared as much as we did, or we always thought they did. And then we're stuck picking up the pieces and putting ourselves back together as best we can.
And sometimes we find ourselves all alone, with not much left to look forward to but getting older. And we end up with too much time alone on our hands, thinking back over the years and looking at where exactly we went wrong, and what we'd do differently if we could just go back and start all over. And we realize for the first time just how delicate that balance is between the lucky ones and the rest of the world.
And lately, whenever I look back to years and years ago, wondering if I'd have been happier as, say, a priest, or a violin teacher, or one of those weird little dudes who goes around door to door wanting to clean your chimney, I see a few choices that I really, really wanted to jump at years ago, but never had the guts, for a few reasons. No, I'm not saying I regret the way anything came out overall, don't think that. But I realize that my biggest chance for happiness was right under my nose 30 years ago, and I let it slip away.
And now, I've been one of the few ultra super lucky ones who's been given a second chance at that same opportunity I let slip past 30 years ago. And knowing what I know now, of course, I stepped forward and took that chance. And I can honestly say, it's transformed me. I feel like a completely different man. I feel like a side of me has been awakened that I forced into a closet years ago, with no intentions of ever letting out or acknowledging, mostly because it never would of fit in with the life's plan that I chose for myself years ago.
And I know now that I'll never be the same again. And I have no idea how I'm going to be able to handle it until I can indulge that side of me again. All I can do is count the days until I can manage to pull it off.
Have any of you ever had anything like that happen? You suddenly indulge yourself in something you decided against years ago, only to find that it's transformed you, and you'll never be the same again, and there's no going back, ever?
I'm referring, of course, to the skirt steak and cheese sandwich with grilled onions I had at that little diner on 47 that I used to stop at sometimes on the way back and forth to class. It's to die for, guys, I'm dead serious.
Why, what did you think I meant?