Reading harold_maude's journal

It's about 5:45 am and I know I should go back to bed. I have a long work day a head of me in about 5 hours, but I had a strange and disturbing dream that made me wake up and then sleep was gone.
So here I am. Having this vivid dream still racing through my mind and having all the questions that it raised running through the inside of me.

It was about choices, and the ablity to make different ones at piviotal moments in time.
I was with some people and we were doing these strange things, only in my dream the things we were doing were normal. The scenery was surreal, like a movie that is filmed in yellow and black and parts are seen as negative photographs.

We were eating at an off road diner and talking about things. I couldn't hear the conversations around me only mumblings and wisperings even though everyone was talking in normal tones.
The sky was angry looking, like we were in a break in a series of storms, it was differnt shades of grays and purples.

Why this point in time was so important, I don't know, but as I sat there among these people who I had been traveling with I remember thinking that my life was not so good. That all I was doing was wandering aimlessly with no point to any of it.
I remember wishing that I could do something else, anything and that would some how make it all better.

All of the sudden, at that moment there was this huge series of bolts of lightening that were everywhere. And when they stopped my life was back somewhere else. I was experiencing dajavu like crazy. Everything was familar. I couldn't understand at first, then it started making sense. I was being given a chance to make different choices about the road I was going to take. And for what ever reason, this was the moment that would effect the out come for many years.

I made different choices, ones that I thought were better. But then as I did, I saw and felt the end result and it was horrible, worse than what I was living. People got ugly and nasty and committed murder all because of the choices I made, people I knew and cared about. It was horrible.

Then all of a sudden I was back in the diner, like nothing had happened. The people around me were still talking in low whispers and smiling and laughing, like people do, and my life suddenly seemed ok somehow.

I woke up. I couldn't go back to sleep. It made me think about choices I've made in my life, and how I've wanted for a long time to go back to places in my past and do something different. I've thought about if I'd never gotten married the first time. If I'd gone to the school I had wanted to and never married the father of my children.
I've tried hard to immagine my life, alone, as alone as I felt in so many things, like a family memeber that shows up at reunions and funreals that no one wants there but they tolorate their presence there anyway, simply because they are blood.

I've thought about what it would have been like if I had realized years ago that my father was full of cruel intentions that I was never going to hear him tell me that he loved me until about 15 minuets after he died, and how if I had realized it sooner than I would never have stayed in the city where I spent most of my life. I would have left and never returned, even for his death, or the death of my brother, or any other realitive that has happened over the last ten years.

I would have gone out into the world and gone to art school and would have taken or tired to take different roads. But where I was at the time I probably would have made some stupid choices that would have ended up disasterously.
I was bent on self distruction and I was living in fear deep inside years ago.
I lived in fear inside for years even after I got married the first time. I was nerotic and definately not ready for parenthood. I was unable to love my children as I should, and the only redeeming grace they had was their father.
A very stable man who was so ready to be a parent. But not so ready for a life with me.
His views of marriage and mine were different. He believed from the beginning that first you have children and then after they leave then you work on getting to know the person your married to.

All that does is make strangers who have had children together.
That's what we were when we got divoriced. I had become this cold empty woman who was living in a house with these other people who were fine individuals, but I was an observer to their lives.
My daughter was disgusted by me, I could see it in her eyes, and was planning after college to move to another city, but when we told the kids that we were getting a divorice she changed her mind.

I remember what she said the day I left. It was the first time I ever saw any kind of tears in her eyes in reference to another human being.
They were brief tears. She said to me, I would love you to stay, but I think it will be good for you to go out there and take care of yourself.

My son hugged me and just said something to have a good life mom. That was all. Nothing more, nothing less. It took me being gone a few years for him to actually begin to miss me being there. I don't think other than having them, my life made any impact on them, except maybe them not wanting me there most of the time.

We talk now, long distance. And it's always good. My son, who is still this very laid back individual who watches life drift past him, still has not decited what he wants to do with his life.

After I left their father began to make his life more comfortable and actually go on vacations and do things that he would never have considered while I was there. I'm glad he's finally gotten to the point where he actually is going on vacation. I don't think he'll ever marry again. I think the kids have always been his life and always will be.

I live with guilt much of the time, because I didn't stay, because I left. I didn't ask him for anything in the divorice. I felt that the house was his, that was his home, and even though I had every right to ask for half of everything, I asked for nothing.
I felt that I owed him room and board for all thoes years. That's what a stranger feels about someone who has taken them in when they are down on their luck and have no prospects.

I still feel like I owe him room and board and some day, when I can I will send him money until my debt is paid off. I don't know how much I owe him, but maybe until the guilt goes away.

I know this sounds probably really screwed up, but then my thoughts and ideas are often not normal.
That's why I'm in the middle of the country, married to my best friend and working in a job that may prove to cost me more than I'm making.

This life I have now, and am a part of is costing me in so many ways. I won't know the full cost for a long time. But if I had made different choices I might not be here today.
I had a plan b. If after comming half way across the country to meet my best friend, and if he chose not to come with me, I was going to head for the coast and abandon my car, leave a note for who would ever find it, find a sea cave and wait for death to come.

It was another time of calm decision. It was something I was completely prepared to do. But there were other plans for my life in the works and my best friend left his home town to come with me.

This dream I had made me think about all thoes things. And made me wonder how different my life would have been if I had known and understood a few things way back when.
There was no one I could talk to, no one who I could go to who cared about what I was doing with my life.
I've met a few people since I've left the town where I was born who fit into that catagory, but they have been in my life very briefly.
After Kevin dies, and I know I will out live him, I don't know what I will do. There is nothing that I can see ahead of me.
I've wondered if what happened at the beginning of August was showing me what my life is when this part of my life is done, when he's gone, and there is no one left who will be in need of a flag stone, or someone who will just be there and listen.

With very few exceptions, the things in my possession right now mean very little to me. I could abandon it all and it wouldn't affect me.
It's all in the process of decay anyway.

I hope when the time comes, that I make good choices. The best choices I can. The only problem is that hindsight only comes after you've done something, and usually not before.

It only looks that way because your standing on your head.