I feel like I’ve been at war with myself. The old me fighting and losing to the person that I am today. I suppose it’s just life, you reach points where you feel exhausted by it all. You long for the time when you were younger, free of responsibility and care. Then too, that view may be distorted, thinking that it was a simpler time. It also was. As the saying goes, if I knew then what I know now… I’d be in a much different place mentally and physically.

Alas, the look back is always much rosier than it actually was. However, when you take the time to consider what our youth was like, who wouldn’t want to return? For me, it’s more than nostalgia. I still miss my grandmother and others that have since passed on. I think of Jamaica and consider the joy and the sadness of my time there. As it stands, I believe that I’ll likely only go back to Jamaica one more time in my life. That chapter of my life is mostly closed.

Now I’m an adult. I have the scars to prove it. I’m just tired, I suppose. I miss many of the moments that I no longer allow myself to reflect on too long. Opportunities lost, missed, denied. Forty is just a few months away, and it’s hard not to think back on the life that I’ve lived. With all its joys and pain, sometimes, I wish hindsight wasn’t always 20/20.

It’s unlike me to end a post in doom and gloom. And considering the sheltered COVID life that we’re all now living, I still take time to enjoy the little things. This morning, as I do most morning, I pulled up the blinds in my home office and stood there for a moment, taking a few deep breaths and smiling at nature and how, regardless of my mood, amazing it still is to be alive.