The Road Not Taken

Feb 4, 2011 : Taking Time Out for Myself

It's been so long since I've blogged that I've grown quite uncomfortable expressing myself.  I tend to take myself too seriously at times - as if anything I write will really amount to a hill of beans.

My counselor was rather pleased that I blogged though, for he considered it a journal. As long as I was being truthful to myself at the moment, that's all he expected of me. I've been living in a rut for so long (nearly fifteen years I would say) that I stopped taking chances, risks and challenges. I poured my being into raising my kids, put aside my career aspirations, kept myself busy with volunteer work until finally the kids no longer needed me. As teens, I'm the last one they want to be seen with at school (or even the neighborhood now).

These past few weeks I've been stewing in my resentment over financial hardships put upon me by the impending divorce. I've grown cynical over Hubby's passive/aggressive tactics over money, parenting plans (putting the major burden of all the parenting on me), and laissez-faire attitude towards me (I'm not any of his concern anymore). I've also come to realize how little I really lived for myself.


It started a week ago, perhaps. Hubby has been dropping hints that things aren't going so great between his girlfriend and himself. She's quite demanding over his time and apparently feels threatened by me, his wife. She won't let him eat meals that I prepare. He's not allowed to move into her condo officially yet so he has to rent a room even though he spends the majority of his time sleeping at her place. Apparently she is stressful to be around.

Tonight Hubby finally dropped the bomb: he's having second thoughts about getting a divorce. Perhaps he was rash in acting so fast. He feels bad for the kids. He feels like he didn't work hard enough to stay together.

It was just as my counselor had warned me! A time would come that Hubby would realize his mistakes and want to take me back. My counselor made me promise: First, I had to seek legal advice so that I would not be taken unfair advantage of during the divorce settlement. Second, I had to stay strong to my truth and not bend to Hubby's will when he realize how costly divorce would be.

Now I find myself at a crossroads, not one of indecision, but rather paths of possibilities that I cannot help but look back upon one day wistfully to wonder how life would have been to have taken the other.

The Road Not Taken by 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, as 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 marked 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.

In the end, as in the poem, it's the nature of decision that there is no right road - there is one taken and one not chosen. It is up to me to feel remorse or not.