Is it just the natural human predeliction for greener grass on the other side that sends my thoughts careening through paths that I feel my life will now never be able to take? Or have my eyes opened to the fact that what I have fought for and now slyly acheived is far less than my fertile imagination had promised it would be?

Perhaps this is fitting retribution for the selfish lies I have said to feed that fantasy. With my hands wrapped around a dream, I floated too far away from the familiar, the safe and the accepted to ever come back. And yet as that dream slowly crystalized into reality, I realized that I was falling at a fast clip towards a lifetime dedicated to disappointment and self-recrimination. I am heading there now - the hard truth of my choices rushing up to meet me with deadly force. And rather than face that spectre, I want to anchor myself to another dream - this time even more prepostrous - of filled with cynicism.

I struggle to remind myself why I had scorned that in the first place, but all my stubborn mind wants to bring up is the satisfied smile on faces dearly beloved, the warmth of a choice well received, the slumber of one not riddled with myriad guilty secrets.

There is a part of me that screams in warning - telling me to not dare forget the hollow emptiness of dreams discarded, the climbing frustration of sacrifices made at enormous prices taken for granted - almost demanded, of the possibility of a far from story book ending of which I have already had a poisonous taste. The venom of that experience must be fading from my blood, for I no longer can use my righteous outrage and sorrow as a sheild against the entreaties of those whom I have never denied before.

And yet - when I followed my foolish dream to escape the system, I unwittingly made commitments to a life I now find myself afraid to lead. While I no longer beleive there is much pain to be suffered by another - for a lot of the emotion had been as much a figment of my imagination as my "happily ever after" - I still quail at the thought of looking my mistake in the eye. And once turned back, what if my stupid mind trows up roadblocks and regrets again? Perhaps I am fated to forever stand at the mouth of the crossroads alone - undecided and fearful of each, yet coveting both destinations.