It’s hard to say what the future holds…
If we could, we’d all be happier or so we tell ourselves, we’d all be in the right place at the right time: The right job, the right relationship, the right area.
If we could see the future we could see the best and worst choices we could conceivably make and act accordingly.
Reality says otherwise.
At the time of writing this column, I again find myself faced with a scenario that makes me wish I could see what was coming down the line.
I moved to Knoxville, Tennessee almost a year ago, a move made to help my best friend and former love help her kids and herself as she was on hospice and needed me to come here with her after the death of my father.
Apprehension was high, not only was I moving to another state (an unknown state at that), but I also was grieving one loss and going straight into another, something that also changed shape as time went on.
About two weeks after arriving, the situation changed and I felt for the first time, but not the last, that I was making a mistake. I chose to stay because that person is, although little by little they are turning into someone else, someone who at times is mean and tells outright lies about me to others.
But I still loved them and so I stayed.
Which brings us to this week.
I was supposed to be gone or leaving at this time, right now as I’m writing. If it wasn’t for my heart, and possibly a snowstorm, I’d be on the road, back to Illinois for a different life if not a harder life.
Instead I’m here from loyalty, although it might mean losing more of my belongings, more of the items I had to resell, more of a loss than a victory.
Then you have to go to my morals and plead your case, that no matter how much abuse my friend gives me, no matter how many losses I accumulate, that the last lights of my friend’s life are more important, that the fact she would be alone when that is the last thing she needs or her two boys who are here needed either.
I suppose the real issue is that whenever I do things like this, things that seem true to my real nature and my heart, I always seem to be the one paying the price, I’m not sure if it’s a test of faith or if it’s the real world knocking on my door telling me that I’m the fool, not the hero.
On those thoughts, another side of me awakens and proceeds to tell me that I know what is right and what is wrong, more so, I know what is right or wrong for me.
That thought has the overtone of truth, followed by the bitter aftertaste of what truth usually entails…but no regrets, better to be yourself in a storm than to be someone else in the sun.
And we walk on…
