If I knew then . . .

I'm not really somber at the moment, just . . . but sometimes thoughts cross your mind in the strangest way, and they always happen at the strangest times.  Right now . . .

I sometimes wonder if I had known what would have happened if I would have told someone ten years ago that we shouldn't wait.  In all reality, ten years ago I was in no kind of place to make a relationship . . . not that I really wanted to.  Instead, the past ten years have been littered with good and bad.  Grad school, new jobs, being po', books, relationships from levels of hell Dante never wrote about, and teaching in the pokey among other things.  Eh . . .

So much happens in ten years that it is hard to say if it would have been worth it.  The idealist in me likes to think that instead of having an apartment share in Astoria, I would be living with him in Astoria.  Again, what can really be certain? Assertions are just that . . . educated guesses and romanticized moments of fantasy with loose threads to reality.  

If we had taken a different turn ten years ago would I have the hardened memories of Jackass, and would I have to the know the feeling of being asked to make plans with someone hours before he married someone else? I would like to say no.  Would the Jackass and I have ever met? If you look at the circumstances of how we met, then no.  But . . . we have mutual friends, so the probability is that we would have met.  Maybe I would have just seen him as a wannbe lover, who drinks too much, and walked away.  Maybe his cold eyes would have still startled me enough to take a second glance.  Maybe.  Maybe not. 

If ten years ago I had gone another path would I have gotten married, would I have just lived with him, or would I be fresh off of a break-up or divorce right now?  Knowing what I was ten years ago, and what he was, I would say . . . we wouldn't like each other anymore.  At all.  Though, the alternate reality always comes in with the possibility that we could have grown together and evolved.  But, the odds of me being me are slim.  Why?

Relationships always alter the course, no matter how hard you try for them not to intercede.  They take you on paths you hadn't intended on taking, the put you in white dresses and heels, running shorts and tanks, and blazers and jeans.  Sometimes they shine your silver accessories to a glimmering sheen, and sometimes . . . they tarnish those accessories and make them dull and black to the noonday light.  Years of polishing may never return them to their previous glimmer and shine. 

So what does any of this mean? If I had known ten years ago that I'd be sitting here wondering if I'm worth the trip, if still cross a memory, or if I should make a call . . . I've been altered from the course of ten years.  I still sleep alone at night, but I still look into a blackened sky soulless from stars hidden from city view and think that there is a reason my life takes the courses it does.  We cross paths on rare occasions, and you can almost see the pause in step and halt in breathe that passes between us.  We never reverse cross the bridge of ten years though.  Why? Fear, stupidity, pride . . . or that we are both quivering on the inside fearful of what the truth would really bring.