As far as long car rides go, yesterday's wasn't so bad. I spent a lot of time thinking in between short conversations.

It all came down to a single conclusion.

You've just got to grow where you're planted. There's no sense in wasting your time with the could of, should have beens, if you're not living in the moment as it comes.

Sure, I thought to myself, I would have done a lot of things differently, if I could have seen the results prior to the decision. Maybe I wouldn't have been so naive to the arrogance of youth. Maybe I would have thought more of my future.

Sometimes though, it's hard to keep yourself from living in the past. In your head, you can change the things you said, open the door you shouldn't have shut, or leave the place you never should have been.

It's easy to trick yourself, that you can change things, just by wishing them so. Recreating your steps, making your life a shadow image of what it was before, just to convince yourself that nothing has changed, when everything has changed.

You hold yourself accountable for all the disappointments you've met up with in your life. Failing to forgive yourself, because you cannot forgive others who have let you down.

On the outside you're a rational thinking person, but on the inside your all messed up, an emotional cripple, scared of letting your guard down for a single second. Scared that the people you've been pushing away, will finally realize how much you've really needed them all along.

You dream that one hug could undo it all, one I'm sorry and the world would change. You wish that that is all it would take to be forgiven.

You wish that life could be as easy for you, as it is for the tree, growing precariously on an outcropping of rocks, roots penetrating deep into the soil, growing upwards and on, because it doesn't know, that it should fall.