Making sense of it all

I was pretty down throughout the second half of 2011, and I spent a lot of time beating myself up about decisions I've made over the past ten to fifteen years. Life often felt like I was looking in the rear view mirror and seeing one wrong turn after another...

I took a walk today, and it occurred to me that the vast majority of the bad decisions I've made in my life (with respect, at least, to relationships) were made in an environment that for a long time was my favorite place to be. What a paradox. I wondered what it was that I was looking for at the time, considering that I so clearly now feel like so many things I did were mistakes.

It makes me think that we can't really have it all. We all want many things; some of them require choices that make other things less attainable. No revelation there... but it does make it a bit easier to forgive myself now.

And I also realize that there isn't necessarily any logic to the past: my past behavior, my life as seen in that rear view mirror. Some of it just happened; some of the decisions were made in the heat of the moment. It's unchangeable yet malleable: what I couldn't understand or accept last fall can be reconciled in the bright sunshine of a February afternoon.