The Other Roads

"Tears are words from the heart that can't be spoken."
One of my favorite poems is 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 coma 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.

Sometimes I think back to simpler times, when I was only a kid, and I wish I could go back there. Things that have happened since, things that have changed me so drastically, would never have happened. I wonder how I would have turned out, who I would have been, had certain things that have happened to me hadn't. If my mom had made different choices, I bet me and my youngest sister wouldn't be so...I don't know. Closed off? Angry all the time? Though, sometimes, I wish I had the anger she does, but I can't seem to find it. She thrived on that anger, shouted it to everyone who mattered, and moved on. She's married now. They have their own place and are doing wonderfully. I want to find this anger, but instead I continue to cling to the hurt inside. I allow the pain to consume me. Mom asked me a question once, when I was eight. I wonder: if I could go back and change my yes to a no, would she have listened? Would that "no" have made a difference at all? Or would I be in the same place I am now? Or, not long after that "yes" if I had spoken up instead of shrunk back in shyness and fear, maybe that would have made all the difference. Maybe I would be married right now with a toddler and a baby on the way. Maybe I'd be on my way to Hollywood to star in my first leading role.

It's so easy to look back and say, "What if?" I do it all the time. But I have great difficulty looking to my future and seeing a complete person. A whole and happy person. I just can't see her. I hope she exists, but I'm not holding my breath.