Footprints

It just feels like I’m worlds away. Caught in between who I thought I was going to be, and the girl I am now, embodying everything I always thought she would. It’s funny because I look at photos, compare lives and I realise just how different it is. It’s not bad, I don’t think I mourn as much anymore. I’m so thankful I’m starting to move away from feeling like I always have to play catch up. I know who I am, I know what makes me happy and it’s so strange because I’ve known my whole life, I just thought it would be more complicated. But I don’t think it is anymore. My broken, bruised body has separated me from everything I thought I would be a part of, and while I’d change my health circumstances in a heartbeat, it would only be for freedom. Walking in nature, seeing friends in quiet, low lit rooms filled with a healthy dose of wine and comfy sofas, the ability to do more of what I do now, but I wouldn’t do much else different and I feel like it’s the “wrong” answer. Shouldn’t I want what they have? Or do I feel confused because I’ve never wanted that in the first place and feel strange for thinking it. Is it ok to never have been to a house party or club, to find socialising with your own age group difficult because you have nothing in common. Is it ok to feel like you did when you were five, only now you have the words to fit the feelings that felt so big back then. Is it ok to be worlds away from everyone you think you should be with, to find solace in the misfits, in the broken vulnerability of your childhood soul. I think it might be, it’s just I never want to be in my own head too much. I’m not living a more profound existence, I’m just living a different one, and shouldn’t that, be enough?

A poem I discovered recently through the wonderful world of the internet is one that whispered this message to me, reminded me of where my heart is,

The Road Not Taken

(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, 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.