Blast from the Past

I recently took a trip down Memory Lane. It was unintentional, a result of telephone call to an old friend. I guess I should have anticipated this little jog of memory but it caught me completely unaware.

Normally, a person would think that a visit like this would be a pleasant thing. For the most part it was, do not misunderstand. I just didn't anticipate the fall-out that would occur. Suddenly, I am hearing names and picturing faces from nearly 20 years ago. Suddenly, I'm catching in vivid memory vignettes of my past. Scenes that were purposefully left behind, scenes from my former marriage and it's aftermath; dramatically underscoring how much life has changed since then.

There are often scenes in movies where the character receives a telephone call or letter that immediately transports them to their past. Memories resurface, feelings resurface, and thus the tone of the movie is set. It feels as if my life has become that movie.

For the first time in eighteen years, I can clearly envision my ex-husband in all his illusions. I can see our old apartment, my old car, my old friends. For the first time in years, it feels like it was yesterday.
All of those things: the car, friends, apartment are gone now. I'm a completely different person, there's really, truly, nothing the same. Not my name, not my looks, not my attitude.

What is unsettling about having everything change is that I fought so hard to Not have everything change during that time. I went against authorities advice to move away, change my name, and essentially disappear. At the time, I refused. Now, after so much time has passed, all of that has changed. I did move, I did change my name, and I did change many things about myself. All for the greater good in the long run and all despite of my efforts.

This has also shown a glimpse of what my life could have been had I stayed. I would be the mother of two teen-aged children; I would be married for 18 years and still the wife of a husband with substance abuse and mental health issues. I would have different friends. I would live in a house my in-laws built for "us" right next door to them. People I know now, I wouldn't know. Experiences I have had would not have happened. It is a glance at an alternate version of my life.

It is terrifying. The entire thing: the glimpse of the past, the glimpse of what-could-have-been. I feel stuck in a time vacuum where the past and the present have collided. At times, I have to blink and concentrate on the present to make the past recede. To say it is disconcerting doesn't quite cover it. It is disorienting.

One positive thing it has done for me: it makes me so thankful for how my life HAS turned out.
That alternate version of my life seems bleak, whereas this version of my life is full of blessings and good things. Thank God for cosmic nudges, unseen plans, and unforeseen circumstances. Without those things...as negative and scary as it was...I would not be the same.