later on

later on always seemed like such a good place to be. like the woman in that article D had read not long ago, the one that discussed being in a relationship with someone with a narcissistic personality disorder. how - according to the woman in question - later on she saw how damaging the whole situation had been. and that later on it was easy for her to say she was better off without him.

or how about that man who told in a low-budget lifestyle tv show how difficult it had been to walk out on his life, the family and the car and the golden retriever, the whole setting he had spent his whole adult life building. but how later on he had realized that it was the exact right thing to do, that from the blissful viewpoint of later on it all made sense. later on, it seemed to D, was where one was most poignant and accurate in their knowledge; later on, there was no what ifs or how abouts or any of that nonsense that kept her awake at night.

later on you always knew; there were no questions whether you were wasting your time doing something you shouldn't be doing just because you were afraid to break the pattern. there were no doomed relationships kept alive only through the daily cpr of swallowed pride and given-up needs, sugar coated with the false hope that some day things would magically work again. later on everything was clear, and you were able to look at yourself and your own actions with a sense of pride. you may have made mistakes, sure, and some of the decisions you made along the line were frankly quite bad, but later on as all of them were wrapped into one, they were all pieces of a puzzle - one you had solved. once you arrived to later on you were finally allowed to take a step back and look at the whole, and all of it made perfect sense.

the only problem with later on was, and it was a substantial one, that D had no idea how to get there. she read the stories, devoured them even, and watched the tv shows until her eyes went dry in her quest of trying to find out the exact moment when - and how - the person had made that final step, the defining decision that would start the process of pushing them into the peaceful state of later on. how could you be sure? how did you know? everybody has their limits; how to tell if you have reached yours?

she couldn't find the answer to this. so, D reasoned, it must be some kind of divine intervention, a veil of certainty that would suddenly descend upon her so that she could say, without a doubt - i have had enough. this is my limit beyond which i won't go. i have given enough.

and with that she would be pushed into the process, and eventually she would be able to say something along the lines "later on i realized that i had been sad for a long time." or "later on it dawned on me that i had tried to achieve something i didn't even want." but for now she had to wait, and endure, because she was not sure. 

and maybe later on she would see that she took way too long to make her decision; but it would still all make sense, it would all be a part of the grand scheme of things, once the later on would finally arrive. things can't happen before they do; and later on, D would understand this as well.