The Road Not Taken

One of the most misinterpreted poems I can think of is Robert Frost's "The Road Not Taken." People seem to want to read it as a poem about individualism, not following the crowd, making your own way in life even if it's not the culturally acceptable way. But I think this poem means something altogether different. Something which every single one of us can relate to. It is a poem about making a choice, and the doubt that inevitably follows; it is a poem about forever wondering what might have been. You notice that the poem's title does not emphasize the choice the narrator did make. Rather, it alludes to the foregone alternative, which is still a lingering thought in the narrator's mind. It is a poem about all the things that may have happened, all the happiness and all the tribulations that may have befallen the narrator, which now can only be guessed at--for the time to walk that path is gone forever.

I have certainly seen times where I had to make a life-changing decision, and I always torture myself with the question of whether I did the right thing... particularly when the choice I made seems to go awry. I find my head spinning with thoughts like, What if I had done it this way? What if I had chosen that instead? Would I have gotten hurt like this? Would my life have been better? Have I screwed everything up? I have had my share of those thoughts recently. And I feel the heaviness that overcomes the narrator of this poem when he says, "I shall be telling this with a sigh somewhere ages and ages hence..." It's a deep, regretful sigh, in the face of having made what he (what I) may always fear was the wrong decision.

One of the wonderful things about poetry is that it tells me things about myself that I could never have put into words. I understand that this narrator feels a lingering pang of sadness at having left this crossroads behind, because I have felt that too. Why? I think it's partly because I fear the unknown. And I think I am not unique in that regard; I am sure that many of us step with trepidation when we find ourselves in a position of not knowing where we are headed. But I also think the sorrow stems in part from the knowledge that, for that one moment as I stood and looked down both paths, I held a piece of my fate in my own hands. And that is a grave matter, for if I chose wrongly, who is there to blame but myself?

Thoughts like that can drive you mad; or at least, they could certainly drive me mad. I don't want the responsibility of having to make a blind choice whose consequences will affect me forever. I don't want to stand here in the wake of the storm and know that it was nobody's fault but mine. That would surely defeat me. And in the end, who's to say that one path was better than another? The old adage says that hindsight is 20/20. But even hindsight only provides a one-angled view of anything, for I am simply looking back up the road I just traveled. I can never, never go back to that point in the road where I had to make the choice, and so I can never be sure what would have befallen me had I chosen differently. So I have to conclude, for my own sake, that there was no fault on my part or anyone else's. I am where I am today because of the choices I have made, and the only difference I can make now is choosing which way to go from here. It is very, very tempting to stand here in limbo and dwell on the road not taken. I do it all the time. But as long as I am doing that, then I am not making the most of my journey for what it is today.

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the one less traveled by--
and that has made all the difference.

Yes. It has made all the difference, because it has shaped who I am. For better or worse, it is what it is. And I am alive and young and strong, and I still have miles to go before I sleep. And that is something for which I can be grateful.

Rest

Flowers are restful to look at. They have neither emotions nor conflicts.




~Sigmund Freud

It's not my fault.

This realization finally hit me this weekend. What's happened to me, what's turned my life into a nightmare... it's not my fault. I've tried to place the blame upon myself, just to have someone or something to blame--because if I could find an object of blame, then I had somewhere to direct my anger. Something to take it all out upon. I was happy to take it out upon myself. At least that way, I could get the anger out into the light. But I did not spare myself any harm by blaming myself. I didn't see it then, but now I do. For months now, I have torn myself to pieces over this situation--because I turned him away; I drove him mad enough to leave. And suddenly, I felt like my life was not worth the unbearable effort of being.

When I saw him last weekend, though, I began to understand that there must be something much deeper going on than him being simply unhappy with me. His discontent must be a product of his own demons, and I just happened to be standing on the bridge that he decided to burn. I have realized that I am not the only one he has decided to reject; rather, our marriage existed within an epoch of his life, the entirety of which he decided to reject. What else exists there with me? His whole life up to this point. His family... his faith... his entire past. What trauma can cause someone like him to reject everything he's ever known and fling himself headlong into one passion--himself?

That's what I see now when I look at him. I see an obscene fascination with himself. I see a gross disregard for any other human being. What I do not see, now, is the man I love. That person, I am afraid, does not exist anymore. What I fear even more is that he never existed--that this stranger, whom I loathe in so many ways, was always the "real" him. That his brief stint with me was something fabricated or imagined.

But at least, now, I can breathe a little easier, because I can see now that all along it was some madness within him that drove him to this. I did not drive him to this. I have to believe that. And I have to move on from there.

I am moving on. I have accepted this as simply the way things are. There is still sadness, but I know it will not linger forever. One of my friends told me, in an attempt to encourage me in the wake of all of this, that whatever doesn't kill us makes us stronger. I told my friend in response, feeling utterly barren, that I did not know which of those alternatives would prove to be the case for me.

Now I know. Perhaps it was silly and weak of me to despair so deeply over this, to the point where I detested myself. But today, I can say definitively that I am going to be OK. I finally believe that. I am still leaning upon those around me for support; I know the next couple of months are not going to be easy, as I am in the process of putting this all behind me. I don't know how to put it behind me. But I know I must... and so I will.