Butterfly Effect?

If you could go back in time and change something, would you?  Would you go back and try to make things different...better?  II wonder if I would I go back and save a boy who was 13 when I last saw him.  And would I be saving him for him, or for me?  Maybe both.  I have always felt like I failed him, I wanted to save him, protect him and yet I was only 18, I didn't know what to do or how to help.  So I left and I didn't look back, because looking back was too hard, too troubling and too hopeless.  Its hard looking at the things you know you can't change, watching helplessly as someone you care about makes mistakes or is used and abused. 

 

I have to remind myself I was only 18.  I was only 18.  But i knew.  I knew better.  I knew that growing up in that house could easily destroy him like it did his brothers.  Or the very least crush his spirit and kill his ambition.  And now, 15 years later this boy hurts and has tried to take his own life.  I guess I can't call him boy, he is no longer that bright eyed 13 year old I knew.  But I can't help wondering, could I have saved him from it all?  And if I had, would it have made his life better, or worse?  Would it have completely changed the path I was on in my life.  

 

Thats the hard part, there is never a way of knowing what could have been.  Mulling it over is an exercise in futility.   You just have to faith that all things happen as they should.