So which way do I go to get out of here?

Before SatNav in cars, and GPS and Google Maps on mobile phones, it was possible to go out for walk and get lost. I know, it happened to me on numerous occasions. Even if I knew the general direction I was going in, I still managed to get confused, or was indecisive or impatient, and so would take the wrong route just to keep going. After one particularly nasty incident during a thunderstorm, someone who loved to dispense wisdom told me that I should be chastened by my experience. He meant my trip out into the hills, but I was certainly chastened by my experience with him. I’m not sure I know the words to describe him, and it would be difficult for someone as inarticulate as me to do so without resorting to profanities, but when I think of him, I not only see a person who, frankly, was not worth one iota of my attention and time, but I also see a common thread, a pattern.

He wasn’t, and still isn’t, an isolated case; I appear to be drawn to people who take me for granted, or treat me like something they’ve stood in. In other words, people not worthy of my attention and time. If any of you are reading this, why don’t you look in the mirror and ask yourself what you have to do to be a better person? While you’re doing that, I’ll ask myself why I should have to do anything special in order to be afforded even a little common courtesy.

When you’re out walking, and you arrive at a crossroads, you’ve got a choice to make. It’s usually a matter of left or right or forward, but there are other options. You could go back the way you came or just stay rooted to the spot. It takes a lot of courage to choose to go forward, to approach the unknown, and it takes a lot of time to build up enough courage to take that first step. Trouble is, when you get there, there’s this terrible feeling of déjà vu. It might take a short time or a long time, but it eventually dawns on you that you’ve been here before, that everyone is the same, whatever coat they wear.

It takes courage to go back, too; back to the life you had before everything changed, back to something long acknowledged as imperfect, unwanted, unwarranted. It takes courage to admit that something akin to being dead, emotionally, is preferable to the slightest cut turning into a gaping wound.Sometimes, though, there’s nothing else for it, no alternative but to retreat inside your protective cocoon. I was dead for a long time, and I will be for a long time to come, but even the faintest light from a distant, spellbinding object can be difficult to extinguish.

Well, again I’m at that crossroads now; left or right or straght ahead into the unknown, back to what I don’t want, or stay where I am and be insulted, disrespected and scraped off the sole of someone's shoe. So which way do I go to get out of here?