A fork in the road...

It...is very rare that I am standing in front of a clear choice. The handful of times in my life that I HAVE found myself standing, staring at a division....I almost always chose...the safer & more timid side....or what felt like, no path at all. Just a standing still, as though (because I was afraid to make the wrong choice) if I did not choose to walk, but lingered, I might have the choice made for me....or hold things at a stand-still, indefinitely.

Some of these choices...and moments I could see coming. Others, I found myself in the moment & new the next instant, no matter what I did, I would never be the same.

I often chose the safe choice, for fear of the rush of change that would follow anything else; to feel as though I might remain on solid ground, for the moment....as though I would not be different, if I did not choose.

But I am always different.

And the handful of times I have chosen to take the plunge.......those are the times I remember looking back on in my life. And longing for. Even the painful parts.

If I had not chosen.....to follow the boy who burned cigarettes into a paper bag, I never would have known the boy who turned out to be my best friend...a soulmate in disguise...before he died a year later.

If I had not chosen to say yes, in a simple game of truth or dare....followed another boy up a set of stairs........I would not have felt my first kiss (not that one, at any rate).....or the first time I felt beautiful...to someone. I would not have stood taller, the next day...and for days and summers after that........

My life often, when I look back so far at the parts that stick, seems to have been a series of split-second choices: each time, for just a moment, my head said, "This is it, do you go for it? Or no?"

Yes.

I have lost friends because of these choices. I have lost opportunities, when I have said no, as well though. And I know now that no choice is wrong.

It's just a choice...

Perhaps the same outcomes will occur eventually. Perhaps not. But they will come about in different ways... All roads meet again, the farther you follow the road.

(I heard that in a story, recently. And...yes. It seems, to me, that is so).

I am standing at a fork today. Two of them, really, tied together... And any choice I make will be lovely & will be right. But this is the first time I am seeing both clearly, a ways down, (as best one can, when we really have so little control over the world & life & the things we don't even know of, yet)..... And it is very rare that either choice, I know will lead me catapulting forward, with a rush of change to follow....picking up speed...(one perhaps a bit more than the other.....but instead of a 'to go or stay/do or do not,' it is really, truthfully two distinct choices:  this road or that one. Both will take me forward). And I'm afraid.

  .....But it's the first time I feel myself standing here, staring....and I know, it is not the RIGHT choice I need to make, because they are both right.

But the question is: in this one life I am living....which one do I want ?

I'm afraid I do not know yet. I'm looking. But.....not making a choice will still make a choice...one that makes the other two....fall apart a little more. Into something else. And I know I don't want that.

          So.........................   Left? Or Right...?       :)


                 (I guess I'll let you know, later today. Hmh).   But, while I'm sad...I'm still smiling.


                                         Life is good.