I was flipping through some old blog posts, and came across this one from December 2007…

Message In A Bottle

See…This is why I wish you’d let me email you…I could just bop these little questions back to you and maybe get a quick answer, instead of putting them into the Christmas card I’m sending.

My friends up here are just a tad too disorganized this year to count on them doing anything all together this New Years, alas. I’ve pinged them and pinged them and it looks like it’s just going to be catch as catch can and I tend to slip right between the cracks when it’s like that. I have a week off between Christmas and New Year and I don’t want to spend it moping around the house alone. Be nice to take a drive in my new car somewhere…particularly somewhere it’s warm. Somewhere I’ve never seen before.

So…basically…will Disneyworld be open during the week between Christmas and New Year…?

And…

What part of the complex, in your experienced opinion, would most appeal to a single adult? I’m not interested in the kiddy stuff, or the thrill rides so much (Unless I had a companion to thrill along with). I’ll probably just be wandering around all by myself. So maybe something to engage my mind and my curiosity? If such as that even exists at Disney? Epcot Center maybe? Or is there something else you think would be better?

And where would you suggest I get a room for a few days. Something basic, and not horribly expensive.

And…

Photo? Please?

Followed shortly by this one…

Now Where The Hell Did I Put Plan ‘B’…?

Well I reckon Disney World’s out. Thanks for the warning about the crowds during Christmas week guy. And here I was wondering if they were even open then…

This takes me back to a time Before. Before what you ask? Before everything changed. That poor guy writing those words. I feel so…not sorry…afraid…for him.

Eternal Sunshine of The Spotless Mind postulated a technology that allows you to erase unpleasant memories, but what if you can go back to the moment before you stepped on the path that brought you to the place where you were even considering it? What if?

A choice. To have lived the life you did…not to be able to revisit that past or change any part of it. Just…not to go there. Knowing only that I don’t reconnect. That’s all. Chose. Accept what came of doing the thing, or don’t do the thing.

Would I? Would I chose the path not travelled? That question is going to haunt me now for days.

Well…for one thing…Pretty sure I wouldn’t have spent so much money on Disney parks and stuff. I mean…I told him I wasn’t interested in theme parks. He had to talk me into going. Not very hard I admit…he did want to see me again after all. And after thirty-four years of searching for him, I sure wanted to see him again.

Maybe instead I spend that money on travel to other countries and places. Maybe I do more road trips. There’s still a lot of North America I haven’t walked on, and now probably never will.

What if I could decide not to do the thing that brought me back to him? What if I could decide to stop looking for him? Just…stop. End it. Ache forever not to see his face and his smile again, and hear his voice, because that’s what it would be. I was aching all those years I searched for him. And afraid. Never to know if he was even still alive, and did he survive the HIV epidemic.  Stop.  Stop asking. Stop needing to know. Stop needing. Chose differently.

Could I even do that? Would have even been in my power to do that? I’d begun drawing A Coming Out Story to make sense of what happened to me back in high school. I figured I’d never see him again and I just had to get it out of me, and also hopefully make some sort of peace with it. By the time I started on it so many years had passed I had to figure if I ever did find him again he’d be set with an all around better guy than I could ever be, much more good looking, not a geeky little artistic weirdo like me, and I’d just have to accept it. He was a catch, and I was an unhandsome oddball. But at least I’d know he was still alive.

And then I did the thing, and I found him again. And that set me on the path to now. And…Knowing.

I know exactly the moment I could chose not to do the thing. It’s right there. That one moment. What if I could stand in that exact moment, knowing how it turned out when I did the thing, and decide not to do it, and lose that thread of my life. Forever. Never to happen. Never to Know.

Could I really chose not to do the thing?  I don’t know. This is going to haunt me.