Wrong side of the road

You cry when they drive on the wrong side of the road. You say you do, but you don't. You just make a note of it. And you try telling yourself it doesn't mean anything, but you know exactly what it means.

You're just too frightened to articulate it even if you never say any of this aloud. It's that you're afraid that all your life you've been going in the wrong direction. You think, because of how things turned out, that you did everything wrong, and them driving on the "wrong" side of the road, that's just a sad little analogue for you and your unerring hindsight.

But it's just as possible things would have gone even worse if you hadn't made the mistakes you had. True, maybe you never would have gotten married and so wouldn't have had to get divorced. And true, you'd be further along in your career.

Would more money make you happy though? Would never having learned all the lessons you did when you were married, would this somehow benefit you now? No. No to all of it.

Then why hate yourself just because the road is a reminder that you went in some wrong directions before coming to this place you're at now? You're right: it hasn't resulted in any of your dreams coming true.

You're not a husband, you're not a father. No one loves you, and your isolation was never a dream until you saw all that wasn't going to be possible for you, all that you'd never be able to make real for yourself.

So in this sense, yes, you've gone down some wrong roads that have landed you here, in this place you call very wrong as well. But in righting all those wrongs, how many more wrong roads would you have taken?

Wrong side of the road

In trying to prevent tragedies from unfolding, how many more tragedies might you have created without ever meaning to? Look at all the sadness you made for yourself, fine. But look, too, at all the sadness that'd already been heaped on you and not by choice.

You'd had no one to talk to, no one to guide you, no one to warn you off of those dead end roads.

So, yes, you did a fair bit of traveling on the wrong side. But now you see it's always going to be the wrong side of the road you'll travel on. And when you get stressed out seeing them driving like that, it's just you seeing all that can never be changed.

It could have been worse, it could always be worse. You see it every time you see them driving on the wrong side of the road saying to yourself: "Another second like that, another toe over the line, and I would've been killed."

Go ahead and cry if you like – no one else will, not ever. Not for merely driving on the wrong side of the road.