Sunday Scribblings: Regret

(Image from here.)

A word like regret should have sparked about a million story ideas for me...or OK, at least ten. After all, I think most of my writing is about regret in some way—missed opportunities, words that stick in the throat that perhaps could have changed everything. A decision never made that perhaps would have been the right decision.

But nothing really came. See, regret is a really loaded word for me, so much so that I can't seem to fictionalize it (not this week, anyway). Regret is something that was constantly on my mind, for a really long time. There are whole pathways in my brain seemingly dedicated to traveling down the same painful ruts again and again.

I grew up believing in the myth of unlimited potential. That's what people always told me. “You have so much potential.” Potential sounded like the sound of my parents' voice when they had some money in the bank. Their voices grew fat with safety. What mattered, of course, was not spending the money. Not squandering the potential.

But, of course, potential doesn't sit in some cosmic bank account. It certainly doesn't accrue interest, especially if you don't apply it to your interests. And I didn't, not really. I was terrified of making the wrong choices, of wasting this potential—of facing my life with the same blank, pinched expression my parents had when the bank account grew lean again, but the bills kept arriving.

So many great opportunities floated close to me, bobbed within my grasp, then drifted away. So many times that I didn't reach out, didn't risk, didn't turn my potential into something more.

By the time Madam was born, I spent much of my day tuned into my mental radio station, K-RGRT.
(more)


Has anyone ever mentioned that babies are awesome listeners? Because they so are. I would strap baby Madam into her stroller and take her up and down the hill where we lived. The sun would stream through her shade, drenching my little Freudian with a luminescent glow. And I would confess...If only I had gone to graduate school immediately after college! If only I had worked harder in publishing, made more contacts, been less afraid! If only I had finished a novel and gotten it published already! If only I had moved to California before I got pregnant, then maybe I could have become a big wig in television before having a baby!

At this point, Madam would be asleep, no doubt thinking my words were some sort of whining prose poem for her benefit, instead of my own. Certainly, the content of my regrets rarely varied...only the intensity of the pain expressed by my words as I worked myself up to a crescendo of Lost Opportunity and Wasted Life Forever.

The Saturday when all that changed wasn't noticably different from all of the other days. Madam still in her stroller, sleeping in the pink glow of her partially shaded seat. The sky was blue as it almost always is in California. Cars rushed past us as I pushed her on the uneven pavement, up the hill.

I started my litany again, I got myself worked up again, maybe a tear or two escaped while I walked, faster and faster.

Then a new thought entered my mind. Why do I need to tell this story over and over again? Did I think I would ever forget my regrets? Did I think that I might gasp..be happy for a moment with my current circumstance if I could just...let it go? And...would I want Madam to grow up and feel this way? Feel like she was doomed because she'd made some less-than-brilliant choices in her past? I thought about my regrets. Some were things that I had wanted passionately, and had not worked hard enough to achieve. Some were things I had given up on too soon. But some were things I didn't really want, but felt like I should. And some were things I could see I was better off without anyway.

And the most important dream was not at all timebound. Was I attempting to join some Olympic Team of Novelists? No? So then why did it matter so much whether I wrote my novel at 25 or 35 or 50? Maybe no one would ever call me a wunderkind or an overnight sensation, but maybe I'd be a better writer for all that. Potential should be squandered, because potential means about as much as those numbers on our bank statements. It stands for something else--something that must be realized, even if it's as far from pristine "potential" as I am from my twenty-something self.  If I manage to teach Madam anything, I hope it's that—to burn through all of her potential fearlessly, to hold on to none of it. To trust that she'll be able to make more deposits to her bank account.

That day changed my relationship to my regrets. Yes, there are long, dark times where I can see every bad choice my younger self made—as though I am watching her through two sided glass, screaming, “No, do the OTHER THING. THE OTHER THING!” But usually I can dig up a little perspective from somewhere (I find chocolate and a nap are spectacular for this purpose) and remind myself that all of these plodding steps are going somewhere. They are going back to the page, again and again, until I spend whatever potential still lies curled within me.

_____________
You won't regret checking out Sunday Scribblings.