The Before Life

If I close my eyes I can imagine it. I am single again. No one changes the radio station in my car. I work to pay the bills and audition to feel alive. Weekends are all potential. I can take spur of the moment trips and I do. I can dream about the future because it's wide open. I am free and independent and happy where I am. I don't have to discuss my decisions or argue with anyone but myself about spending money. I read a book a week. That was before, which was in the grand scheme of things not so long ago, but it's hard to imagine that I lived that lifetime before this one. Where is the moment when they touched? In that time I thought of a time like this as giving up. Where am I? I am certainly in a place where I hope that I am riding a river and not climbing a latter. I am tired of fighting. I fought for my dream in my before life. Now I fight to be able to function. I have always understood that I would fight my whole life, but I never thought about fighting all of someone else's life. I hope there's a time when the pain and the surgeries and uncertainty are beyond me. I hope there's a time when I can laugh about everything I went through when Riley was small. It's hard to imagine now. There is alot to be grateful for now in the midst of all the stress and healing, but I am not where I ever imagined I'd be. Maybe expectations are my problem. I remember crying myself to sleep in New York because I wasn't where I thought I'd be one year out of college. Now it is almost ten years and it's been quite an adventure. Almost none of it was what I expected. I wouldn't take any of it back, but sometimes I wish I could fast forward.