Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.Excerpted from The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost
I’d always felt drawn to this poem and the image of somehow being off the beaten path, of pursuing alternatives to the norm, and that that was okay.
But I’ve recently come to realize that the road I thought I’ve been on these past few years really isn’t much of a road. It’s more like one of those roads Google maps tries to get you on if you make the mistake of using it for navigation instructions in the mountains. At first it looks like a road.
Then it becomes something that might have been a logging road at one time. A bit further on, any past uses were probably limited to early settlers or fur trappers with wagons or horses. Eventually, you suspect that this is only a trail followed by migrating elk. If you have any sense at all, you’ve abandoned this “road” ages ago and are back on pavement or at least gravel.
Not me. I’ve been trying to make my way along this elk migration route for years now. This is just what one does when you’re the only daughter of a dying man, right? You keep plodding along and don’t ask questions about the journey. When you run into the inevitable boulder or downed tree blocking your way, you attempt to clear them. If you can’t, you make a slight diversion and keep on going the best you can day after day after day.
At one point, I thought I’d found a companion for part of this journey, a man who was in a similar situation with a dying father. I feel like I should’ve seen the warning signs. He was never with me on my path. He was quite literally phoning it in. But when he said he was not ready for a relationship, I heard, just wait and try to be patient, and someday he would be. So, I kept on plodding along alone on this nonexistent road checking in with him from time to time to see how he was doing. Could I move any of his boulders? I stored some of mine with him. He didn’t complain, but neither did he reciprocate. It was all one way.
Dad eventually passed on. Now that he was at peace, I finally had time to stop and take a look around at where I was and where I thought I was going. Low and behold when I came up for air and looked around, the man for whom I’d been waiting apparently was indeed ready for a relationship. With another woman. Not only that, it had been going on for some time even though he hadn’t thought to tell me. It was now at the point where she appeared to be playing an active and integral role in his life. Two deaths in a short period. One, I could mourn openly. The other, was a more private loss. The death of a story I’d told myself to keep going. When he’d said he wasn’t ready for a relationship, I hadn’t let myself hear the unspoken but implied, with me.
So, I find myself sitting in a bit of a daze in the middle of this nonexistent road with no sense of direction. How cliché for a woman to be dependant on a man for direction. But the good thing about having no direction is that there’s really no wrong way to go. Anywhere I turn and head toward is the right way as it marks a new direction and a new beginning.
I think it’s time to abandon the road entirely, along with the related notion that there is some ultimate destination worth pursuing. Once I stopped trying to move boulders and trees so I could move myself, I caught sight through the trees of a beautiful green meadow in the distance. It may not lead anywhere. And I’ll almost certainly have to abandon the baggage I’ve been carrying to get there, but it looks so inviting. That’s where I’m headed.
Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
there is a field.
I’ll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase “each other” doesn’t make any sense.mevlana jelaluddin rumi – 13th century
A Single Mind 