The Road Ahead

It must be hell not to know where your relationship is headed. The thought processes that get played with in these instances are often with views of hindsight and cynicism. Perhaps it's the knowledge that my other relationships (or most of them at least) haven't really been heading anywhere.

Now that I'm in a relationship with motives and a future, it's strange to think how, in the others, I pretended they were heading somewhere, as if I couldn't take the idea that they weren't. The most intricate futures were sketched and then carved into what I thought was stone, when it was really only plasticine. I thought they were real, I convinced myself. Marriage, kids, all of the things I want that none of them did.

And now that I'm in a relationship that is going somewhere, it's different, I feel like I can keep my eyes open in this relationship instead of clouding them in delusion. Looking back leaves me wondering how I did it, and whether anyone I know knew I was doing it.

I wonder sometimes if the other people in my life are doing the same thing. The thing is, you're never sure where you're going, and sometimes it's like being halfway up a mountain, you can't see very far in front of you because of low cloud and mist rising off the lake. If the mist cleared it could be beautiful, but there are rockfalls on the road and trees that may have fallen.

You can ask, bring up the subject, try to talk about it; but if you don't have the same ideas about a future, the same thirsts that need quenching, then it's just going to turn into a tug of war. One of you is inevitably going to lose and end up feeling bitter. And if the relationship isn't heading where you want it to, what do you do? I have no idea... I only know what I did.

And worse than the split ambitions is those with no ambitions. When asked "where do you see yourself in five years" they have no idea. So what? They're "young" just over twenty... and they don't know yet what they want from life. Not at all. Oh yeah! There is that house, you know, the one they want in the future... well I say future, I actually mean in the next millennium, because they're not going to be able to afford it any time soon.

Maybe my lack of faith is misplaced though. Who knows? In a few years maybe they will grow up enough to be the man with the dreams you always wanted. Or maybe they won't. Perhaps all this maybe crap is just those low clouds I was talking about at the beginning. Is this delusion?