The post I published yesterday seems to have disappeared! Maybe I can recreate...bear with me.

Second chances are rarely given and even more rarely taken. Why not take the opportunity to choose another path, give love space to bloom and grow, to find and develop new strengths, refine and perfect old skills? From my perspective, I was caught in a prison made of bad choices and decisions. In my head was a constant litany of "you made the choice now live with the consequences....or take responsibility for your decisions....your happiness is not the point." The sad thing is I fell for it, bought it hook, line and sinker.

The life I lived became a pretense, an exercise in making everyone around me believe I was happy and doing fine. I did share my unhappiness, my distress, with the person I trusted the most because I felt he would do whatever needed to be done to help me find the peace and fulfilment, the understanding I needed. Promises were made and broken. I was assured things would change and being the trusting soul I was, believed. Only to have my trust broken time and again.

I came to the point where I saw ahead of me a long life of misery and lies, broken dreams, and further isolation. But then I was given a second chance.....and I actually recognized it for what it was. A chance to break the chain of misery I had wound around my heart and soul......I had made a few bad choices.....did that require me to punish myself for the rest of my life and give up any chance to reclaim the happiness and completeness which could have been? Absolutely not!

I took responsibility for wrong choices and have decided to move on. I'm finished beating myself up about choices made in the immaturity of my youth, or in the heat of anger and disappointment, or in the fog of depression. I stepped up and declared, "this is not what I wanted so I choose another path....a path that is my choice and no one else's." My path to happiness and fulfillment.

Starting over when one is just a pinch past middle age can be terrifying.....everything is new and different and unknown. But I think attitude and frame of mind have a lot to do with how it plays out. Another choice, live this new life as an adventure, an opportunity and oh the things you can learn or relearn about yourself.