Hindsight

Hindsight is one of the most over rated experiences anyone can have.

It's like a coloring book that clears itself out waiting for a new interpretation. There's no way to know what crayons were really used once the page has been whitewashed.

I am as guilty of writing things in neat, orderly, progressive cohesiveness as anyone. It makes stories more comprehensible and more fascinating, but real life is seldom that straightforward.

The decisions I made in the past were influenced by:

The era I was living in.  Was it the sixties, seventies, eighties?

The people I lived closest to. My husband, my children, my siblings, my parents, even my friends.

My awareness of our financial state at the time. My health and the health of those around me.What was going on when I went to work, or was at work and what was going on with anyone else I lived with's work. It depended on the advice whispered in my ear by well meaning busy bodies and loving people too.

It relied upon so many infinitesimal variables, that I will probably never truly remember exactly how I came to think and do the things I did.

I can tell you, in this moment, what I think happened and why, but tomorrow that may not be true.

I can tell you that I know I loved parts of people I no longer want to be around. I still love those parts of them that drew us together, but parts change, circumstances change, people change and sometimes the love gets buried so deep it's no longer accessible.  When that happens it's like bringing two magnets together, negative end to negative end.  They simply repel each other. Living with someone under those circumstances is really too difficult.

Still, in hindsight, I would be hard pressed to tell you exactly how those things occurred.  It was never one single event, or one trait, or even one person's fault. The universal gears only had to move one cog forward and a billion others subtly shifted. Then that shift was interpreted by a billion different people in a billion different ways and a new era began.