The me I left behind.

I was reading a blog today. It was someone else's blog but it reminded me of someone I used to be.
This person lives in a place where I once lived and in that place I was someone that I am just a faint shadow of today, here and now.
I left that me behind because he was on a behavioral pattern arc that I could clearly see would someday soon lead to destruction, of that me and this me and any future me there ever is or was to be.
Oh yes, behavioral patterns that were consistent with an imminent spiral of death, not just of the spirit, but of the flesh. I felt that if I died in that place there my soul would always roam, diseased in perennial decay.
I had fun as that me that I once was, oh the fun we had, even though it is debatable whether or not that was the really real me.
Many nights I would stare into a pit of myself splashed against the lights and blights of the city.
I would rationalize the things that I was doing to achieve a state of decadent and amusing enlightenment.
Incantations on wind battered cliffs high above the ocean.
All my arguments seemed very convincing.

Luckily
by some miracle I suppose
I had the insight or foresight to up and leave that place
and in doing so I left that me behind.

The me that I am today is a combination of an ancient me and a newer me with all the wisdom of the lessons I learned as that misguided me that I was talking about before.
But in reading that blog and looking at the pictures of a life and a city that I once lived
I found myself wishing to be back in that life and that me I left behind.
And that scares me.