I walk a lonely road, The only one that I have ever known. Don't know where it goes, But it's home to me, and I walk alone. I walk this empty street, On the Boulevard of Broken Dreams, Where the city sleeps, And I'm the only one, and I walk alone. I walk alone, I walk alone. I walk alone, I walk alone. My shadow's the only one that walks beside me. My shallow heart's the only thing that's beating. Sometimes, I wish someone out there will find me, 'Til then, I walk alone.

 Sometimes I wonder what's the point of the gift of prophecy and having to play Cassandra. O I know the myth of Cassandra right well, it's one I've always identified with because too often across my entire life people have been skeptical and asked me "but how can you KNOW?" and all I can ever answer is "I saw it."  I don't even know that it's meant to be punishment, but so often it just feels like it is and it's so exhausting to KNOW but not to be believed or not to be able to shift the fatelines..... Because I mean, what's the point of it when most of the time you can't change the fatelines? Sure it's nice to have the extra time/space to plan for what's inevitable when you see major immutable precogs so that while everyone is shocked you already have a plan to hit the ground running, but at what cost do you have to suffer out of sync with everyone else you know? I mean, yeah, sometimes you can see the course to shift to a different fateline and it's amazing and there are literally lives that exist now because I shifted the fatelines enough they or their parents didn't die before they were born -- but even when I can win those victories against contingent precogs, most people will never believe you because they never saw or had to live those fatelines that you truncated. They never KNEW how close to tragic fatelines everything was and how thin the knifes edge balance point was..... They don't know how close they personally came to death or how close certain things were to absolute disaster until you stepped in and shifted the course of the fatelines because you saw what would happen if you did nothing....

But then there's the times you see the chance and you fight like hell and you fail. And it feels like you failed as you watch the fatelines you try to make true dim and fade from many to a handful to one then to none and you recognize that what once was a contingent fateline you had even the smallest chance to shift has now become an immutable one that no damn thing you do or can ever do will ever stop or alter. Because you failed. You tried and you failed and you knew all along the price of your failure and still you couldn't find the way through not to fail.....I tried every damn thing I could to get to the fatelines where my sweet Pisces pup lived to 21.5 instead of not quite 15.... I dealt with an entire years worth of "we will never do this again if I can't find my way through" until it turned into simply "we will never do this again" and the joy tasted of ashes even while we were in the moments of joy still unfolding. I poured so much energy into healing her and keeping any infection or cancer from breeding inside her and in taking away her pain -- but the thing with healing hands is you can heal what's broken and stop from dividing the cells that shouldn't and promote the healthy ones and you can literally take all the pain out from the sufferer but it doesn't tell you what's wrong. I poured so much into her that I had terrible migraines and exhaustion from over extending my gifts connecting to source and being a conduit for too much energy for a physical body and I did nothing but buy time in stasis and no closer to finding out what she would die of or how to stop it. I did that for well over 6 months until finally my dog decided around Samhain that she wouldn't let me connect up and heal her with energy work, she'd only let me take away her pain and if I tried to sneak anything else she would give me sad reproachful eyes and get up move across the room or to another room entirely so I understood she meant her choice that I wasn't to keep draining myself to keep her going without knowing what to do to actually make her better.... 

And my da insists that it wasn't the tooth paining her, that a dog doesn't completely refuse to eat and die of 11 days complete hunger strike against even soft food or soft food in a slurry with water despite everything you and multiple vets try to get her to eat UNLESS there's something else like a cancer that you can't see... And I know maybe he's right. And I know the Dr. Mason told me after I found that cracked tooth that while he'd never seen one cracked that way so it might have been hurting her when she bit down on hard food because there are three roots to that upper molar on a dog and the crack ran across all of them, but with no inflammation or abscess it shouldn't have been enough to make her refuse even soft food and slurries unless there was something else wrong we just couldn't see going on inside her.  But. Also. Tooth pain is a bitch and people and animals HAVE died from refusing to eat because their teeth hurt them for millions of years and as long as she wasn't eating or drinking so anything would touch the tooth and i was taking the pain away, she didn't hurt so she just decided to avoid what hurt.... And what if all I needed to do to get to those longer fatelines was find the crack on the tooth earlier so we could schedule an extraction instead of me continuously burning out all infections and anything dividing abnormally in her body but never dealing with the cracked tooth getting water/air/anything right up on the nerves of any or all of those three roots? 

I knew from the time she was a puppy that if I could be really good she would live to 21.5 years old but if I couldn't then she wouldn't quite make 15.... I knew that for all those years and still somehow I wasn't good enough to figure it out in time, even with 6 months of bloodwork and scans and meds to fix her bloodwork while we tried to find the cause for her bloodwork anomalies... I wasn't good enough. And what if the entire time all I needed to do was find the crack in the tooth and insist on extracting it before the bloodwork made her a bad candidate for sedation?!?!

What even was the point of knowing and seeing the contingent precogs and the fatelines where I could be good enough if I just wasn't good enough to be able to pull it off? Why carry that for over a year and rob those moments of joy by knowing the bittersweet truth that if I couldn't win they would be the last time and then by autumn knowing I hadn't been good enough and they would be the last times ever because she'd never see another spring or summer or another fall...Everybody thinks they wish they'd known that something would be the last ever, but let me tell you as a precog that you shouldn't wish for it because it mixes bittersweet and sorrow into your joy whereas those who don't know get to taste the joy without the knowledge it can never be again..... And why even carry the knowing if you can't be good enough to win out to the brighter fatelines? 

I've just. I've been grappling for a long while now with these questions and this sense of guilt and not being good enough, not having done enough to get my sweet girl across that threshhold into the 21.5 year fatelines... It's not that I didn't expect her to never die, all things mortal die, I just really thought that if I saw the possibility of those longer fatelines glimmering I should and could somehow be good enough to get us there. And I wasn't. I failed. I tried everything I could to get there and I made every moment of that last year count but still I failed and I can't help but count all the walks we didn't take when she wanted because she asked when I was already running late to drop her off before other plans.... And I just. What was the point in me knowing there might be a way past the not quite 15 year death that I saw if I wasn't good enough to manifest it into being real no matter how damn hard I tried and how far I pushed this body channeling more energy than a physical body should to try to force a way to those fatelines? And what if it was all just a damned cracked tooth that needed to be caught and extracted all along? And I just wasn't good enough to find that because I was too busy dealing with the symptoms to find the root(s) cause?

That's what gets me to sobbing til I have hiccups and headaches. Thinking that with my gift of precog/prophecy I knew there was a way but despite all my love and all my many gifts and all my effort exhausting myself I still wasn't good enough or smart enough to figure it out until it was too late and maybe it was just such a damn fool thing as a cracked tooth killed her.... That's what guts me and makes me cry. To feel I failed her because how could I have seen a fateline to get her past it if there weren't also fatelines I could/should have been good enough to figure it out in time?

I tried. And I failed. I wasn't good enough and I failed her when she trusted me completely. And I'm sorry. I'm so so sorry.... I don't know how I could have tried harder or what else I could have done or how I could have put more energy and fight into to win.... But I know I failed her. Because those contingent precogs would never have existed, there would have just been immutable precogs of her death, if there hadn't been some way for me to make them manifest. The very fact I knew about them meant there was some path, some set of choices, that was open to me to get to the other fatelines until we were past the window of opportunity. 

And that's how I know I failed her, because there had to have been a way to the 21.5 yr old death I saw as contingent precogs or I wouldn't have ever seen it if I couldn't find a way to make it real. And although never in a million years would my dog (or anyone else) accuse me of failing her or not doing every damn thing I could across those last six months as the fatelines dimmed and went out to get her past the not quite 15 years old crisis, still I felt the guilt of me having failed her.... Nobody else blames me or accuses me for it, but I feel I failed her. Because I saw those contingent precogs fatelines and I wouldn't have seen them unless there was some set of choices could have been made to make them real..... I wasn't good enough and I failed her even though I gave her the best possible of the death fate lines open to her and as much time as possible and as much energy and free from pain as possible and I gave her the one thing she wanted which was to have me there with her. My sweet little bear luck dragon would never tell me that I ever failed her -- but I tell me that. I've been telling myself that since those fatelines of my Pisces pup making it to 21.5 flickered and were extinguished.....

And what was the point in me seeing those contingent precogs and the alternate fatelines and trying to fight for them if I didn't have it in me to be good enough to reach them? I could have handled the knowing she would die and all the bittersweet beautiful joys of last times if it had just always been the immutable precog recognition that we were at the end of her thread -- that's what it is to love mortal things is to know every moment is borrowed time to be treasured. It was the false promise contingent precog that there was a way for me to have more time when even trying my damnedest and nearly burning out this body running too much raw energy power through it, I still wasn't good enough to make it real. I still failed her....despite all my fighting and trying to find the way, still I failed her. 

[Post title: Lyrics to the song Boulevard of Broken Dreams by Green Day.]