I am not big on regretting things. Never have been. And that is not to say that I haven't made plenty of choices worthy of regretting. It is only to say that it seems counter-intuitive to me to do so. After all, it is all of the little moments, and all of the choices—mistakes or no—that have coalesced into the person I am today. And with a few minor exceptions, I like who that person is.
But when you are struggling with loss, or with anything that results in heartache, it is very easy to start down the path of wishing that things hadn't happened. "If this had never happened, if I had never met that person, or made that one decision that precipitated this result, I wouldn't be in this mess, feeling this way..."
And when all you want in that moment is for the hurt to stop, suddenly the idea of selective memory erase becomes very appealing.
But the truth is, the reason that you are hurting so badly is because you have lost something that was precious to you. And that means that there was a whole lot of good which preceded preciousness. Lots of laughs. Lots of beauty. Lots of joy. Lots of good-stuff-memories. All culminating in the great crescendo—a thing worth smiling about, worth treasuring, worth longing for. Worth hurting over...
And if you consider it carefully, from a platform outside of the present pain, would you really trade all of that good just to escape the despair of the current moment?
For me, that pendulum invariably comes to rest upon this reply: I would never trade it. Not for anything.
But when you are rapt in the eye of storm, and there is nothing but violent turbulence in each corner of the horizon, and the dust has yet to settle, it is utterly maddening to experience the tides of both desires at once—the push of wanting to forget/go back/change things, and the pull of wanting to hold on and treasure the past for what it was.
Stand with me through the storm. The dust will settle in time, and my desires will come to rest precisely where they should.
