do you ever miss the way things used to be?
TO ANSWER SUCH A question she must weigh both sides of the coin ( THEN & NOW - PAST & PRESENT ) and determine which is heavier, which lighter. There is good and bad in any given moment, it is a part of how life balances itself out, but the sweetness fluctuates. And she cannot judge the way things used to be on a single memory. There is bitterness laced in later years that leaves her tongue coated in ash & dust. But that is not all there is.
She thinks on the CHARM of sparring sessions ending in laughter, of quiet moments with her daughter, of chess games that took hours & ones that took minutes, of talks late at night fueled by a mission gone bad or the surprise of a thunderstorm, the camaraderie & the trust she placed in every member of the team -- she thinks of how she would have DIED to keep them safe, how she would have given everything to protect them, how she loved them like her own blood.
She thinks of how it went wrong.
There are flashes of FIGHTS, shouting others down, words fueled by FIRE and rage thrown at once-called friends, the sting of betrayal, the ache of inactivity & being held in contempt & mistrust, the crack of a once solid foundation, the team breaking apart as if it had never been ... but she had left before then, hadn’t she? In a way, she had CEMENTED the inevitable.
If she could go back, she would CHANGE that decision, but who knows if she would be able to change everything? But, oh, those days of SUNSHINE might make up for the heartache.
‘Of course I do --------’ she murmurs, ‘but that does not change what happened, nor what is happening now. Pining after the past blinds us to the present.’
