Dear Regret
You and I have known each other for as long as I can remember. In fact, i am sure that you knew me before i had the words or the language to call you my oldest friend.
That is, if you are a friend.
And let’s face it, friends to do not let friends down, or leave them alone when they’re needed the most.
You are very much a part of me as much as your other friends, like shame, blame, fault and guilt. In fact, I have decided to call you the five fingers because something happens when you get together. Something happens when we interact with blame, shame, fault, guilt and regret all at once. And I call you the five fingers because each of you represent the way our fingers ball into a fist, and this is the fist that we use to beat ourselves up with.
Blame, shame, fault, guilt, and regret . . .
The five fingers of rejective thinking.
My old friend Todd used to tell me, “put the bat down,” when I used beat myself up.
And I get that.
You know?
I really do.
I see how you interact with me. I see how you tangle with other and how you distort our thinking. I see how you cause us to hurt one another or turn inward and overthink.
And to be honest, I’m good at this.
I am very good at overthinking.
I am excellent when it comes to overanalyzing or overcomplicating things.
Yes. I am.
It was a beautiful morning, this morning. I can say the sky was pretty but I do not like the word pretty anymore.
Pretty is a word that was used in a lie that otherwise destroyed me. And the lie I believed is that I was special to someone, which was a lie because I was just another part or piece in their emotional machine called “their life.”
I was not innocent either.
Not by any means.
But I was hurt. Or maybe the word destroyed would fit this better.
Yes, I was destroyed.
And parts of me are still destroyed or otherwise irreparable.
I know this.
So, into the air, I send this to you.
Goodbye to my beautiful regrets,
And now, I have these scars that no one sees. I have these pains that come without a physical representation. But ah, I can feel them. I have these cracks in my facade and indentations and and cantons and valleys that no one can detect or sense when they assume contours of my mind.
No one sees me.
No one knows.
No one feels from my hand and no one assumes the tears or understand the quiet echoes that repeat in my dreams when I lay alone and sleepless.
There are no tough guys anymore. And at the same time, I have never been tough. Or maybe I don’t know what it means to be tough.
Or maybe I don’t care anymore. Or better yet, maybe I am done with the need to fit or compete or to lose myself to the comparison to others.
Or maybe I’m done fighting.
Yes. Maybe.
I’m done with the war room dramas that take place in my head.
I am done with the irretrievableness of things that are not mine, or maybe they were never mine, but ah, I wanted them to be mine.
What’s mine is mien
And what’s not is not.
And so, I know what I want.
I want peace, and even if the times ahead are uncertain and even if the uncertainties are riddled with battles and fights that are bound for me, at least I have a goal in mind.
At least I know what I want.
And even . . .
Even . . . .
even if the things I want are things that I cannot have and even if my dreams are too lofty and too far beyond my reach, then at least I stand firm and say, “I want this!”
And I do.
I want this and nothing else.
you
my dream
my hope
my life . .
And so, even if I don’t get what I want; at least I made my decision. At least I dared enough to walk away from the places where I knew I didn’t belong.
Wealthy or poor, weak or strong, none of these things have anything to do with what it means to be tough. I do not believe so because in my best estimation, I believe the toughest thing there is to be is to be yourself.
You have to be able to do this without apology.
You have to be able to stand for who you are and “as you are” and this has to be done without concern for those who accept or include you.
This is what it means to be tough . . .
at least to me.
To be you.
This is tough,
To be disconnected or unhinged to the need for social approval, this is amazing to me,
This is not to say that one needs to defy the world or be so antisocial that their isolation is their paradise. This is not to say that if I am to be tough then I am to be like an island with no other countries to support the sands and my soil.
No.
I want love.
I want connection.
I want substance.
But I want this to be real.
I do not want something that is close or nearly there.
I want it all but what I want does not come with substitutes.
I want my life to have meaning and in order for me to have meaning, then I have to understand the value of life.
life . . .
as in my life . . .
I have to understand that not all things fit and not all things that do not fit (or belong together) come with a list of fault or blame. There are often no real sense of accountability and often, things break apart or people change and fade away without warning or leaving a note.
I have become my own worst slave and as for you, my old friend named regret; you and I are free to part ways.
We can do this, here and now.
I can stand up. I can turn around. I can change my direction.
I can change my mind and change my thinking.
And if I struggle of if I cannot feel better than I think or think better than I feel; I can alter my behavior to change my thinking.
I can change my actions to change the way I feel, which, in turn, will update my thinking and improve me enough so that I can be better..
I do not need to find out who is at fault or who I should blame.
I do not need to hold myself in contempt or to lace my gloves and fight anymore.
I was thinking about things that took place in my life. I was thinking about the feel of violence or the actions that take place when violence and rage become outrageous. I was thinking about how knives stab into flesh and pierce the gut of an unimportant enemy.
I was thinking about the expense of battle and the poorness of wars.
I was thinking about the way hate decays my thinking and how resentment destroys us, or how this rots away at our soul from the inside out.
I was thinking about the difference between beauty and ugliness and the contrast between love and hate.
I believe everyone has seen their share of all the above.
I believe that life happens and what makes us tough or at least differentiates us between the tough and the weak is the way we handle our losses.
Rather than lick our wounds, I have to ask the question; who do you want to be?
Who would you want to be in the case of life and death battles?
Would you rather be the warrior and hero or the cowardly and the soft who tried to run and were captured?
Would you rather take the hill of battle, or would you rather be the one who drowned in the muck of your emotional quicksand and sink down into an abyss and be forgotten?
I want to be tough but more than anything, I want to be worthy. I want to be regal . . .
You know?
I want to have merit.
I want my life to have quality and should I be in the poor hour or the dog house, or should my demons infest upon me and take what’s left of me, then so be it.
If my freedom is taken and the ghost of my past catch me and imprison my hopes, then so be it.
So be it . . .
And let me be clear.
If I am to be me, then I have to be me; and thus, I can no longer quibble or fight or wage war against unimportant enemies, both foreign and domestic.
You and your five friends or the five fingers of rejective thinking, such as blame, shame, fault, guilt . . .
I have to part ways now.
I have to let go.
I have to understand “what is,” is “what was”
This has nothing to do with how I feel or what I think.
I heard it said that facts do not care about my feelings.
I agree.
I agree that I have feelings.
I know that I have disappointments.
I also have dreams.
I have hopes.
I have love and I have the love of my life.
I have the only girl I want, which I get that she is not mine at the moment. But she has my heart and therefore, no amount of arguing or fighting or pretending that I am otherwise fine can avoid or deny this fact.
I want her
So, I wait for her . . .
flowers, ladybugs, signs and all
I have to let go of so many things.
And that’s a tough thing to do . . .
And me?
I want to be tough, even if the toughest thing that I do is to admit that I am weak
(without you)
Take care . . .
Goodbye, regret.
You and I have seen enough of each other
I’m sure.
The Written Addiction 