I don't believe it's possible to live a life without regrets. Do I think that people should wallow in regrets or let those regrets hold them back in any way? Absolutely not. But show me a person who says they truly have no regrets, and I'll show you a liar. Heck, just today I've racked up at least a dozen--I regret not going for a run, I regret that I forgot to file my unemployment claim last week so now I won't get paid, I regret not making a hair appointment sooner because my hair is driving me absolutely batty. I could go on at length, but those are a pretty telling random sampling.
But I have big lifetime regrets as well.
There are two people whose friendship meant the world to me for a brief moment in my life, but because of time or immaturity I didn't hold on to.
One was a friendship that died because of the inevitable impossibility of three teenage girls being able to sustain the "best friends" relationship long term. I'm not even sure that three adult women are capable of being best friends without any friction or hurt feelings, but leave this task in the hands of three fifteen to sixteen year old girls and there are bound to be fireworks. The bad kind. More like Surface to Air Missiles, actually.
The other girl was one with whom I became close friends my senior year in high school and then bonded with further through our college years. In retrospect, I realize that friendship also started out with three of us, and quickly deteriorated into a two person situation. I'm like the Grim Reaper of friendship--make friends with me and fear for the life of your outside relationships. I leave behind a blazing trail of razed and mangled friendships. Anyway, that one was all well and good until I graduated from college and moved out of state, leading to an ever-slowing trickle of emails and phone calls which eventually ground to a halt.
The first friend, I actually did hear from when I was in college. She emailed me with a much justified and understandable, "Hey, so after all of these years, can we talk about what the hell happened?" I wrote back and we traded a couple of emails and talked about meeting up, but then I went through a nightmare of a breakup, the whole world became all about me and my woes and heartache, and I can't exactly remember how that correspondence fell off the wheels. I was too busy starving myself and reading self-help books and angsty poetry.
There are still days when I think about reaching out. Through the magic of the internet and my overwhelming curiosity, I have a basic idea of how their lives have turned out, at least in the big picture sense. If I really wanted to, I know that it would be pretty easy to get in touch with both of them. So, I guess my biggest regret is not losing their friendship in the first place, but knowing that I'm not brave enough to make the first step toward reconnecting. Is it a regret that I lose sleep over, or that haunts my every waking moment, no. But it is one that crops up in a big way from time to time when I'm feeling particularly nostalgic.
I know that even if we did touch base again and exchange a couple of emails, nothing would ever change the hurt that I caused one friend or compensate for the length of time we've been out of touch. It's a sort of "let sleeping dogs lie" response, and sure, that may be cowardly, but after all of this time I find it hard to believe that they're sitting at home on a Monday night wondering about me. So, that's the excuse I've allowed myself to use, and I just make do with a google or facebook search here and there to quell any lingering curiosity.
Oh my God, I am such a stalker. I definitely regret that, but not as much as I regret the fact that I haven't eaten a brownie today. At least that last one can be fixed, pronto.
