musings

My situation at the moment is making me go back and re-evaluate certain things about my life. Things I should have or I didn't do, things that, looking back, I wish I had done or I wish I'd done better. People I could have treated differently. I'd like to say that I'm pleased with the person I am today, but that would be a lie. There's days when I am and days when I'm not. Days when I still wish I could change.

Looking back on people I've lost. Some have died, some haven't. Some just drifted away over time and lack of communication, on my part mostly, I'm pretty terrible at that at the best of times. And some who my actions pushed away. I sometimes have trouble adjusting to the fact that now, all my friends are at different stages in their lives. And whilst I want to see them the same way I saw them in, say, High school or back in my home town, it's not like that anymore. Some of them have a different focus now, some are doing things I could only dream of doing, some are doing things that I would call mistakes, but it's their life, so who am I to judge?

I've let a lot of people down. And there've been times when I've really let myself down. It's really easy to miss the things you don't want to see in the first place. Sometimes I wish I'd had the foresight to make better decisions. But making mistakes is part of learning and I'm definitely learning now. It's good and it's bad and sometimes it just sucks. Today I found some stuff belonging to someone who was a friend. I had to email here asking where I should send them and it was typically polite. But I felt numb afterward. This was someone with whom I used to share my deepest, darkest secrets. Someone who knows more about me than some of my closest friends now. It's so easy for all that to just slip away. The whole situation was messy though, at the end. But I wish she'd been able to tell me that something was wrong and I wish I hadn't been so blind not to see that what might not have been a big deal to me at the time, was to her.

I'm not going to go to grave, whenever that may be, without any regrets. Regrets are a part of life. But, I'd like to think that now, I'm in a position to make better decisions than I have in the past. Decisions that I've actually considered, rather than making on the spot, without thinking of the effects they may have on others. I want to be happy. And I want to be carefree and I want to be a bit stupid sometimes, but not at the risk of losing my friends or hurting the people I care about. I've been so focused in the past on what other people see and so little on what I see when I look in the mirror and more importantly what I want to see. Because isn't that more important? I'd sooner be happy with myself, with good friends, than hate the very sight of me, but for five minutes be the life of the party.