Just Words

[keiramarcos]

So, yesterday I listed ten fucked up things I said while angry. It was kind of cathartic admitting them actually because while I do acknowledge that each and every one of them was fucked up-- I don't feel all that guilty about having said them.

Today I'm going to confess to things that I said that I really wish in retrospect that I'd never, ever said.

1. "I love you" -- said to my first college boyfriend but I really didn't know what it meant and he just wanted to sleep with a virgin and I felt so stupid months later when I realized it and when I told him that I hated him, I meant it with every cell in my body.

2. "I think we should just be friends" -- said to my best friend my second year of college after we had a steamy week long sex affair. I was petrified of losing his friendship and I broke both of our hearts in the process. I haven't heard from him in nearly eight years. He works with the Peace Corps -- he joined up our junior year of college and bailed on us, me, and everything else in his life to help other people and avoid his own crap. Avoidance is a nasty business but at least his productive about it.

3. "You're incapable of loving anyone but yourself and you're going to die alone and miserable." -- said to the guy I dated after college but before I met my husband. I dumped him two days later and when he called me a week afterward begging me to talk to him -- I hung up on him. I saw him for the first time in years about six months ago. He has his career but no wife, no children, and very few friends. He actually thanked me for making him realize he didn't need anyone but himself and I'm not still not sure if he was being sarcastic or if he really meant I'd fucked his world view up that much.

4. "If I'm pregnant, I know I can't keep it. I have a plan and a life and a career and there is no room for this kind of accident." -- said my friend my senior year of college three weeks after I took the GRE for grad school and a week after my period was due. I had no way of knowing that it was the beginnings of my issues with infertility, I was too busy praying not to be pregnant. I would give almost anything to take those prayers back -- to have had that baby with a guy I broke up with before I graduated because then I would have had a child.

5. "No, I don't want to go to the prom." -- I turned down three offers to be taken to my senior prom and I don't exactly regret not going. That kind of thing never interested me BUT the last boy I turned down ended up going to the prom with a bunch of other guys and they were in a car accident and while none of them died -- it did fuck up his knee and he lost his scholarship and never went to college.

It's the ripples right? You never know how your words and your actions are going to alter someone's path in life. I know I can't live my life worrying about what might happen or what could have happened if I'd chosen a different path.

Comments

[i-cant-talk-now.livejournal.com]

You can only take responsibility for your own actions and your own search for happiness and success. Can you regret not being more polite? Sure. But you are not responsible for other people's happiness or life choices. It's a bit arrogant to assume that if you had married this guy, that his life would have been wonderful. And yours. That if you had not spoken what was in your heart when you said "No" or "not now" or " I love you," that things would have been better for someone else. That if you had been there, you could have stopped the car accident. Instead It could have been you in the car, too.

You are the one in charge of your emotions and reactions. And they are individuals and adults and are responsible for theirs. To meet someone years later and presume to know that one action on your part would have changed their whole life, made it better and more successful and happier, is I think really presumptuous. Years later you view your past actions and maybe have regrets or insights or change your view on how and the why something happened. But this is also true of the other person. They could look back and say, "wow, I really wasn't ready for marriage then. I am so glad she turned me down."

[i-cant-talk-now.livejournal.com]

all of this by the way reminds me of the website PostSecrets. Have you ever looked at it?

http://www.postsecret.com/

PostSecret
4/07/2011
Sunday Secrets
PostSecret is an ongoing community art project where people mail
in their secrets anonymously on one side of a homemade postcard.

[keiramarcos]

These are just things I regret. I don't feel guilty about any of it because I can't control the world or other people. I just regret the words. It's always been my policy to be extremely honest with myself and regret is part of that process. I'm not all melancholy about it or anything. Just reflection.

The other thing...

[justalurkr.livejournal.com]

...about pondering what-might-have-beens (that don't involve SGA characters, anyway) is that sooner or later, it all comes down to the realization that one was a secondary character in someone else's story, and I for one won't stand for it. ;)