The Road Not Traveled

I've told parts of this story before, though possibly not since 2008.

My second year in college, I fell in love hard. At first I saw a picture and couldn't stop thinking of him. I tried to shake it off, but he kept turning up in person, and then we started talking. For each stage, I was more into him than seemed reasonable or logical, based on the level of contact we'd had. With every contact in person, I felt like there was electricity flowing between us, though, and I had never felt that with anyone else. It wasn't easy to shake off.

I did not tell him that I loved him then. A big part of that was how ridiculous it would have sounded, but I believe I could have dealt with that if I had believed it to be at all possible that he could return my feelings, or that I could deserve to have good things happen to me. Sometimes I would get very angry with myself for being a coward or being lazy, but I wasn't either of those things. When courage or exertion were required for other people, or for things I felt responsible for, I had them. I just couldn't make that effort for me.

I did an in-depth self-examination back in 2008, and I came away with a few specific regrets most of which dealt with him, but I think the most significant one was for our first conversation. He said something about working on goals, and I should have asked him about that. I knew I wanted to write. I didn't know he wanted to act.

It was the sort of thing that could have bonded us. I remember at times thinking about how I wanted to make movies, and wondering if he would be interested in that. I didn't find out that in fact he already was until after the last time I saw him, in 1993.

He has been in more movies than I have had screenplays produced, though it probably hasn't been everything he wanted either. For a time, I did imagine this life where we could have helped each other. Because we were coming at the same fields from different sides, we could build connections and contribute. I didn't see us becoming a top Hollywood power couple or anything, but I imagined that we could alternate between working for hire on bigger projects and making our own independent movies, and that it would be a really satisfying life.

That life could have been good. There are no guarantees of course, but I really wanted it.

I also want the life that I have now. It has some really hard parts, but there are people I have met and experiences I have had that are good, and they might not have been able to happen any other way.

I do hate that the biggest impediment to the other life was my own inability to value myself. If I had told him I loved him, or taken the less radical but still bold move of simply asking him out, he could easily have said no, but it would have been done. I could still have been the girl who believed in myself, so dated other people, or pushed harder on other opportunities. I could have been reconciled to being me much earlier, which is sometimes still pretty hard.

I do not only blame myself, because I feel like it must have been pretty obvious that I loved him, and he never acted on it either, so maybe my self-esteem issues didn't even matter for that, but they mattered for everything else.

So writing about this is perhaps mourning that life that was lost. After all, if you don't let yourself acknowledge your own pain, it leads to all kinds of problems - this week has been all about that.

Also, and this is the really important part, I need to not do that again. I don't want to miss other good possibilities simply because I don't believe that I can have good things. To say, "Yes, I deserve to be happy and successful" is a radical first step, but actually acting upon it, and changing established habits, is much harder.

The road I am on has it's good spots, but for whatever is ahead if I need to turn or merge or speed up or slow down, I want to be able to do it. I want to be aware of what is going on, and make good choices. That's my wish for 2015 and beyond.