Should I Have Stayed?

And who would I have been had I stayed
Would I have tasted the same happiness?
Met the same sorrows
Would I have been in touch with the world
Without leaving the limits of the city
Could I have grown into the person I am today?
Would the pain had been the same?
Would I have loved the same?
Lost the same?

Maybe so, maybe I would have fared better
Done greater things
Studied more
Worked harder
But I will never know
And I can’t live wondering what if so

What I do know with the outmost certainty
Is that I don’t regret it
I may miss it from time to time
Dream in memories of the past
Contemplate nostalgia when it hits me in moments of pause
But I don’t regret it

And I don’t know if I’ll ever come back
Sometimes I tell myself that
After spending my youth
Doing everything I can do
That here is where I’ll settle
Where I’ll buy that house
With the white picket fence
And the garage with two cars
The 2.5 children with the person I love
But that may never happen

If I learned one thing after all these years
Away from old friends
From family
From familiarity
Is that there will always be too many factors
Too many variables to consider and dissect
Do I leave? Do I stay?
Do I return?
Is to return to where you’ve been before
Simply another way to stay in a comfort
You already know?

No matter how much you plan
Setting goals and calendar reminders
You can never account for everything
You either take the chance and run with it
Or stay
But…
Who will I be if I stay?

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Watched Wonder Woman and fell in love with the quote "Who will I be if I stay"
I realized how relevant it was to my own life.
As you can tell this appears to be less of a poem and more of a ramble.