The Road Not Taken

Yesterday, I found myself in a very vulnerable place. Anyone who knows me, knows that Sundays are my least favorite day of the week. Perhaps it's simply because it's the day before the work week restarts and I feel the weekend perishing with each passing minute. Perhaps it's because I'm coming down from two days of activity, relaxation or socializing. Whatever the case may be, the melancholy assuredly will set in each and every Sunday and I'll enter a place of inward thought. For me, this can lead to moments of enlightenment or self realization, but oftentimes, it leads to me pondering the things I wish I could change, reminiscing about the past and feeling the effects of a foggy future.

So, there I sat on my couch, staring out the window directly across the room from me, watching the sun go down and hearing people outside laughing, talking and having fun. Tears slowly made their trek down my cheeks as I thought of things that could have been, things that may still be and wishing I knew what path to walk down. My best friend, Katie, sent me a Robert Frost poem last night ... and like an old friend coming back to remind me of sentiments I'd long forgotten, his words put me just a bit more at ease:

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 kept 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.

~ C ~