Down the Rabbit Hole

Don't Believe In Do-Overs

30 Day Blogging Challenge
PROMPT May 26th
Share an instance in your life when you would have liked a do-over.

As a rule, I do not contemplate "do-overs" in my life. It is a dangerous concept for someone like me, someone who spent so many years trying to "fix" someone only to have it all come to nothing. I spent five years of my life with an alcoholic whom I loved madly but must have known, deep down in my core, that I could not save him. Regardless I threw myself into his recovery with a determination and a passion he himself never possessed. I missed all the signs that he had given up until it was too late. He died in his mid-thirties, taking a large piece of me along with all the promises of marriage and a family with him. I'd give him those prime years of my life when I could have been getting married and starting a family. I traded those ripe years for pain and disappointments, betrayals and urine-colored hospital floors and acrid smells of blood and antiseptic.

If I had a do-over, would I even have handled it all differently? Would I have still fallen in love with my best friend? Wouldn't I have still tried everything to save him from himself? No, do-overs are not something I allow myself to contemplate ever. Instead I remind myself that all my choices, good and bad, brought me to where I am today and it is exactly where I am supposed to be. I met a wonderful man, got a second chance at love and discovered the amazing gift that is motherhood. Life has brought me blessings, three times over any pain and heartache I have been forced to bear.