So much

So much to say....and so little ability to put it all adequately into words.

I'm being overrun by nostalgia, even knowing that the good ol' days were hardly as good back then as they seem to be now. How did so much time go by so quickly? How did I manage to miss the passing of so many years?

Or did I really miss them?

I wonder if it wasn't just a case of one day slipping into the next as I moved on, moved through, let my diverging path take me down a road I didn't know was taking me further from a time which I should have spent much more introspectively. I often wonder how my life would be different had I made different decisions, chosen different roads. Scanning back over the years, now I recognize certain markers, points that constituted momentous decisions in my life that, at the time, seemed nothing more than generic 'yes/no', 'here/there' choices similar to determining whether toast or eggs would be on the breakfast menu.

I don't necessarily live with regrets, although I cannot help the temptation to wonder 'what if...' at certain points now.

What if I had stayed? What if I'd left sooner?

What if I chosen this, or that, or these here?

What if I'd learned then, and not now?