How Can One?

How can one be so blessed and so miserable at the same time?  

I have so many wonderful blessings in my life.  Two wonderful boys, fabulous loving friends, nice home, a vehicle that works, clothes on my back, food in the refrigerator, enough money in the bank for emergencies, no debt, and the list could go on forever I am so blessed.  Yet, right at this point in my life I am miserable.  

I feel I am at a great crossroad and no matter what path I take I will change my life completely and that scares me to the point where I am afraid to take a step.

Just 3 months ago I was fine.  I mean there was nothing exciting going on in my life, but I was blessed, content, and moving along okay. Now I am in constant conflict.  I cry at least five times a day.  I either stay awake all night or fall asleep at 9 on the couch.  

I don't like it.  I am unsure of which way to go.  I would like to go back to where I was before, but I think it is too late.  I have crossed some invisible barrier and there is no turning back.  

The strange thing about this state of misery is that I have laughed more in the last 2 months than I have laughed in years. I have met more new people in the last month than I have since before Raymond died. I am losing weight and getting more exercise.  There are days when I feel completely lighthearted.  

Sometimes I think I am moving beyond the grief of all my losses and that I am not miserable, but then I'll stop and think and realize that no, I am miserable.

I have some big decisions to make in the next few months, and more to come in the next couple of years.  I hope I choose the right path with each decision.

The Road Not Taken has always been one of my favorite poems, but sometimes we don't get to choose the road. Sometimes that choice is taken away from us by decisions made by others whether right or wrong, and while their decisions may have put put us on the perfect path, there is always that "what might have been" thought.

The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

And then there is:

"For all sad words of tongue and pen, The saddest are these, "It might have been." ~
John Greenleaf Whittier

It obviously wasn't meant to be, but I can't help but wonder "Why in the hell not!"