Missing My Chances By Corlene

It has only been one week since I was forced from my home and put into the “Riverside Lodge.” The name makes it sound like such a great place to slowly grow old. That is not the case. It is just another one of those nursing homes where they put people like myself because they have nowhere else to put us. Let me tell you, this is not the place where I pictured myself leaving this world. Slowly, but surely, I will die here and my life will be over.

Where has the time gone? It seems like only yesterday I was discovering what the world really was all about, and dreaming of all the things I wanted to do and see. So many times I found myself dreaming of the adventures I had read about when really I wanted to live them. My favourite poem in school was “Ulysseus,” by Alfred Lord Tennyson. That epic described exactly how I felt in my golden days of youth and how I wanted to live my odyssey. I cherished phrases such as “I can not rest from travel; I will drink life to the lees, for always I will be roaming with a hungry heart.” This kind adventure was to be my life, but now I look back with disappointment and see my accomplishments and they are nothing compared to my dreams. I have always wanted to go to the extreme: traveling to exotic places, eating mysterious foods, and performing daring stunts like sky diving and bungee jumping. I never once passed on an opportunity but I never sought any of these things out.

Where did the time go; why did I not let my hungry heart lead me? Now, here I sit in my old rocking chair trying to remember the significance of my life and regretting not taking chances when I had them. I feel as though my time is up and I have already died inside. I missed my opportunities. Now that I cannot escape from this place and seek any kind of adventure I feel as though life is not worth living anymore. I missed my chance. If anyone is to ever read this journal after I am gone, my hope is they will not make the same mistakes I made.

“Come, my friends. ‘Tis not to late to seek a newer world.” “Made weak by tine and fate, but strong in will,” “To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.”

This poem embodied my life’s dream, and yet that is all it will ever be.