Mirror Glasses

When I was young my parents bought my seester and I a spy kit. At least, I'm fairly certain that's what it was.
We had stickers with fingerprints on them (in fact I still have a juice glass with a fingerprint sticker on the side of it), little cardboard tubes for looking around corners and some wicked awesome sunglasses that had mirrors on the sides of them.
When I say mirrors on the side I don't mean like sticking out the side, I mean that on the inside outer edges of each of the lenses was a mirrored coating that you could see what was happening beside you just by looking at that portion of the lens.

I wore them all the time. (Perhaps the first signs of what has become my intense paranoia in regards to killers)
But you know, eventually I started running into things. Because I was so enamored with what was behind me that I forgot I needed to look forward.

I was telling that story half jokingly to some co-workers the other day when I felt like I was hit upside the head. Because I've been running into things a lot lately.
I'm staring behind me so much, I've become so enamored with how things are or were that I'm not looking forward with intentionality to what could be coming up in the future.

It's not the first time I've been smacked upside the head with that thought.

My natural default is to remain lost in memories, what ifs and way back whens. The future has always been very scary to me and I tend to not dream or acknowledge the dreams that thrust themselves on me because to move forward is so terrifying.
But little by little I'm learning to stop gazing longingly in the mirror showing me what has passed and is no longer. Little by little I'm learning to skirt the edges of the pit instead of swan diving into the muck and mire.

I take a several tentative steps forward then a giant leap back.
But I'm looking forward for the first time that I can really remember.