This post has been a long time in coming. A long time. It's one that I've been thinking about for forever, and waffling between writing it and not. In the end, I decided that I need to post it. One, to get some of this stuff written down somewhere. Two, because I really want to make people think when they read my blog. Yeah, sometimes I try to be funny. Sometimes I'm writing to prove a point. Mostly though, I want to be able to write the stuff that gets people's gears turning. And I think that this might be one of those.
Unfortunately, I feel like I need to give a disclaimer at the beginning of this one. This stuff has been buried, deep, for a long time. But just because I'm putting this on my blog doesn't mean that I'd love to talk about the specifics associated with this post. In fact, I'd never talk about the particulars of this blog post with anyone. And I mean anyone. I don't care who you are, or what relationship I have with you. I will not talk about it. I don't mean to be rude. I'm just telling you how it is. So please, don't test me on this one. Okay? Thanks.
And now, to the heart of the matter.
Regrets.
Lots of people have them. They're all over the place floating around, getting in the way, popping their heads up at the most inopportune times. If there's one piece of advice that I've heard over and over, it's that we should always live our life so that we won't have any regrets. And right now, as much as I can, I do my best to live by that standard.
But it hasn't always been that way. I've made some pretty stupid decisions along the path that my life has taken. I think that everyone does to some extent. But there's one particular time in my memory that haunts me continually. It never lets go. No matter how hard I try to forget, no matter how badly I want to let go of it...I can't.
Kids are stupid, yes? Now, I'm not talking about that ten year-old neighbor that comes over to your house, takes your kids toys, and then leaves them lying in the street, or in the middle of your driveway, or even in the other neighbor's pool. I'm talking about the grown up kind. The ones that think that they know everything, when in reality they haven't the first clue.
For me, there was one particular time of my life, when I was away from my family and the world that I had grown up in. I was still learning who I was and what I wanted, but was doing my best to be a good person and make good choices. And in the chaos of that period, I became friends with two people in particular. Two people that should have been the closest friends that I had during that time. They should have been the last ones to suffer from my stupidity, from my poor choices, from my selfishness. Yet they did. And worse yet, it seems, even today, as if they were the only ones to be hurt when all was said and done.
The first, a girl, I'll call M. The second, a guy, I'll name R. Foremost, for anonymity, but also because when it comes to this subject, I find that I'm still a coward.
I became friends with R and M at about the same time. There were a bundle of us that would all hang out and enjoy one another's company. We'd eat together, and go to the movies, and watch tv; play sports, stay up late, and stare up at the nighttime sky. I think that we all became good friends during that time, but R and M rose to the top of the pile for me.
I considered R to be one of the best guy friends that I had at that point. He was really bright, spontaneous, contagiously funny, and just all around a great guy. I like to think that he thought similar things about me.
I dated M for a while, if you could call it that. I never really did all that much to be considered a boyfriend, but I suppose that for a while we were an item. I was pretty new to the scene, with very little experience behind me and no idea what I wanted out of a relationship with someone. Just that I liked what I was seeing. But my problem, which I can see now but couldn't then, was that I didn't know who I was. I was too worried about what the guy in the next booth was thinking about me. Too worried about someone else's opinion that shouldn't have mattered a lick. But like I said, I couldn't see it. So, things with her kind of fizzled as my time counted down.
Down to the day when I had to move away.
The days were full and fun and crazy. But then in that last week, I made a decision that made R completely turn away from me. I can still remember that point, the very second, when I realized just how directly he had been impacted by this decision I'd made. I still get a hollow feeling in my chest when I think about it. I can't help it. He didn't talk to me the next day. Or any day afterward, for that matter. Moving day came and went, and I had to move on.
Time away from M was odd. I ended up writing to her a handful of times while we lived in different states. I'd like to say that our relationship grew during that time. I don't really know if it did. I know that I opened up to her in those letters more than I had to anyone else in my entire life. And maybe it was all just stupid stuff, but I don't ever remember her laughing at anything she shouldn't have. Just the stuff that I really wanted her to. I thought for a while during those months that I might have some future with this girl that had chosen me where there were so many other options. But it wasn't to be. Why? Because I was stupid.
A few years later, I tried to contact her. I sent a quick email, asking her how she was doing, what she was up to. Her response was short, but cordial. I emailed back, commenting on some worry I had that she might not want to talk to me. Again, she responded, this time questioningly and still short. I remember thinking, when I read that last email of hers, "Wow, I don't think she understood me." The next time I responded, I found that her account had been deleted. A short time later, I went back and read those emails again, and after reading that last one of hers for the second time, I thought, "Wow, I didn't understand myself."
I hadn't realized until that point just how deep my regret had gone, how far down it had buried its head. I realized that I wanted her to hate me. Why? Because I hated myself. I hated what I had done, what I had decided, where things had ended. How they had ended. My two emails were dripping with that expectation. Every word seemed to point to the fact that I had hoped that she'd just rip into me with claws bared.
As I've been thinking about my experiences in relation to this, I've found that I have that same hatred of myself for driving away my friend R as well. I want him to hate me. I expect him to. And if I saw him on the street? I'd fully expect him to pummel me until my body was black and blue, till I couldn't stand upright any long, until I finally blacked out and he could finally bring himself to walk away from me. And would I do anything to stop him? No. I don't think I'd raise a finger to stop it. Again, why? Because I expect it. Because I think I deserve it.
The problem with my expectation in each case is that R and M are good people. They've probably completely forgotten all aout this mess. Moved past it at least. I doubt they think about me at all any more. Why would they? But I can't say that it's the same for me. I think about those two all too often. I have good days and bad ones. Okay, being truthful, sometimes I have bad weeks. But I get through them.
Now, I don't want you to get me wrong. I don't regret where I am in life right now. On the contrary, I'm very happy with my life. But I just wish that I had done things differently in connection with these two. More than anything, I do. Is that too much to want?
This post really isn't for me. I'm not writing this with any sense that sharing this somehow absolves me of my fault in the matter. And it's not for R and M. I'm not looking for them to somehow stumble across my blog through a random twist of fate and see just how sorry I am (or even how completely tormented I am about it). Yeah, I'd love to patch things up with them if I could. If I'd let myself. But this post isn't for that either.
This post is for you. For the readers. In reading this, I hope that you can take away the message that I hope to convey. That you really do need to live your life so that you don't have any regrets. Use that noggin of yours. Don't make choices that will hurt yourself. Don't hurt the ones you love. Why? Because you'll hate yourself for it. Now and for a long time afterwards, you'll hate yourself for it. So love them. And stay happy.
Live to have no regrets.
