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And so it is.

Growing up when people asked me what I feared the most I had only one answer. Most people would say spiders, or insects, big dogs, or even heights. Those are usual fears and it’s even true that they were some of mine. But quite frankly even at a young age I knew what I feared the most. Regret.
Regret is a peculiar thing. More often than not, in the moment, we don’t know if we will face it as part of the outcome for our actions. We direly hope that the doors that we close, and the paths that we choose are inevitably leading us down our very own yellow brick road to blissfulness. Regret, like hindsight, is 20/20.
The truth is that none of us are perfect. That we won’t always make the right decisions. That sometimes we will do what we can with what we have. And that inevitably we will face that life has a way of disregarding even our best intentions.
A couple of weeks ago my first love got married. I met the news with so many mixed emotions. A downpour of thoughts crossed my mind, along with a thousand what ifs. All truly unwelcomed and surprising as this person hasn’t been a part of my life in a very, very long time.
What I failed to comprehend was pointed out by a dear friend. “You’re not crying because you are still in love with him. You aren’t crying because you have lost him forever. And you aren’t even crying because you miss him. You are crying because you regret the outcome. Because the news makes you take inventory of your own current status and you realize that you aren’t happy with where you are in life. So nostalgia blinds you and makes you wonder if it could have been different. You are sad because you wish, not for him to be your happy ending, but because you wish you had one at all.”
I looked at her in disbelief. In a few sentences she seemed to narrow down to the source of it all. And it was completely true.
Certain events do make us take inventory of our lives. They make you ask yourself where you are in your own story. They make you look around you and pinpoint exactly what is missing. And since we only have our own recollection of experience, nostalgia hits, showing you images of the moments when you did have what is now gone, making tears escape violently.
It so very easy to misinterpret these as real, tangible, feelings that profess love. The truth is I’m not still in love with him. I don’t even know him anymore. All I have is a collection of sweet reverie memories. Life through rose colored, first love, everything is beautiful, glasses. He isn’t the boy who kept me from falling anymore, and I’m not the naïve, inexperienced child he once knew. Even in alternate universes our story had an ending.
But what was true, was that it made me face regret. To look at the path that I took since him, the long sometimes thorn covered, dark winding roads, and the detours that mislead me. To now. This place. I’m no better off today than the last time he said goodbye to me. And that hurts. Because I’ve made so many poor choices when it comes to relationships. Because I’ve looked near and far and have yet to find where I belong. Because in the grand scheme of things I came out with the short end of the stick.
SD once wrote: “So many times it seemed like there were chances to stop things before they started. Or even stop them in midstream. But it was even worse when you knew in that very moment that there was still time to save yourself, and yet you wouldn't even budge.”
I’ve spent a lifetime not budging, and then flinching at the inescapable cost thereafter. And that’s not anyone else’s fault but all my own. If regrets are repentance for an action taken, especially for consequences that you knew you could of easily avoided, mines are as deep as the ocean blue.
Unavoidably we become the people we said we would never become. I think back to a sun dress wearing, brown hair, hazel eyes, freckled face kid. And everything she feared she’d become, she now is. And that… that’s what I regret the most.

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Anonymous said…
And so it is, just like you said it would be.
July 6, 2015 at 9:45 PM
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