reckless disregard

here is the thing.
it all makes sense. it makes sense he would fall in love with her. it makes sense he would want to be with the person he loves. it makes sense that every fiber of his being, having changed and grown and having begun to see the possibility of this growth, would want to invest in all the things he sees his future to be, instead of laying in the ashes of his past compromises.

we all get this. we get older. we begin to grow up. we make decisions. some are easy. sex? yes! drivers license? yes! some things we do are as natural as our instincts tell us they are. the benefits far outweigh the risks, the new responsibilities.

some decisions require infinitely more compromise. we get older. we begin to grow. maybe we might a nice girl. settle down. marry her. we want the things this promises. love and support and stability and children and sex on tap. yes. we say yes, if with a bit of trepidation, if with some relucatance, because we are also giving up some freedom, some hope, some fantasy. we are giving that up to make new hope, and if creativity is our guide, to create new fantasy, to unite fantasy with reality.we understand that reality need not be fantasy's undoing, merely fantasy's conservative partner on the road to realizing our dreams.

and sometimes the choice isn't wise. sometimes we give up too much. sometimes we aren't who we hoped. sometimes they aren't who you'd hoped. sometimes that job isn't worth getting up every morning at 6am for, or the therapy it's bound to cost you down the line. sometimes stability is actually predictable boredom and the abuse you can count on.

and then more decisions come.

this is not my point.

my point is: you can't go back. you can change things, but you can't undo things. you were there. you asked and you said yes and you wore that ring and you didn't wear that condom. that was your decision. you can't erase the decisions you've made because you wish you could make others that would be clean and neat and easy to make if you hadn't made those decisions in the past. the decisions you wish to make now are riddled with the decisions of the past.
they are informed by them. they are enriched by them.

and this is the truth no matter who you are
this is who you are no matter the truth
even if you spent your life hiding from life, even if you never made a false step, or even if married the wrong girl or left a trail of illegitimate bastards in your wake.
they are there, those choices, and what you do has something to do with those decisions

it's part of being human

puppies do not understand that when you leave the room you still exist. they don't remember they peed in the corner 5 minutes after they did it. the past, and the outside only exists as a whisp of memory and a yearning, but they can't grasp it, they can't learn from it. this is their luxury and their curse. they always think you are going to give them that treat. always. every time they ask. they never understand you usually won't give it to them.their luxury, their curse. a temporary reprieve from time.

so here is the thing that all makes sense. the many loves. the changing heart. the desire to leave his past decisions behind because maybe he could have made better ones. the desire to get out, while the gettings good. to make the changes he needs to make, and to make them stick. all of these yearnings not only make sense, but are forgiveable. they are understandable and empathy bleeds from my pores.

but here is what does not make sense. how he can move on like the past never happened. how can just pretend things he worked to produced never materialized. how he can render what once defined his life as irrelevant, and throw himself, anew, into this new life, like that old one never existed.

you see it all over. pictures of her and references to her.her and her. they are everywhere, but distinct. seperate. as if they exist in different planes. irrelevant to eachother when they both gaze across his shadow in the same bed. and the play act like he is a babe in the woods, newly discovering all his possibilities for the first time.

so what really doesn't make sense is he can make decisions without heed to the past and all that helped him build who he is today. and how this is anything other than ingrateful, and at times, even viciously cruel.