About: Regrets

Regrets are an interesting beast.  It seems like you’re always told to live your life without regrets…but is this really possible?  Dictionary.com defines regret as, “to think of with a sense of loss”.  Is it possible to travel through time without looking back on certain aspects and not feel bits of a “sense of loss” when it comes to certain decisions of the past?  I shall examine a list of a couple of my own regrets, and see what they bring to light.

 

1.  Starting School, Quitting School, Starting School, Quitting School, Starting School:  For those who don’t know me well, I’ve done an exhaustive tour of many of the institutions of higher learning in the greater San Diego County…UCSD, Grossmont, SDSU, and finally the University of Phoenix.  I started off straight out of high school at UCSD with an education that was to be 100% handled by President Clinton.  I proceeded to piss that all away with laziness and lack of focus.  I turned a four year degree into a nine year degree…minus the doctorate.  I don’t really know why the transition was so hard for me…I just wish I had finished what I started, the first time.

 

2.  Staying the Course on the Relationship From Hell:  I never have been a possessor of a high level of self-confidence.  I guess this would probably explain why I stuck it out in the worst relationship known to man…for over three years.  Three long, exhausting, horrifying, wasted years.  If I wasn’t so convinced that I would never find true happiness after, I would have hit the eject button after month four.  I strained relationships with friends, moved out of the state, gave up a decent job, and squashed any chances of a musical career…all for the “love” of an emotionally unstable borderline psychotic.

 

There are many other “regrets” of my formative years, but these are just the two the jump to mind most readily, and are probably the biggest ones I have.  But here’s the interesting thing that came to me on the drive home this afternoon.  Were it not for these true “senses of loss”, these true regrets, I would not be sitting where I am right now, with a heart full of contentment.  Here’s the path that all these bad, regretful decisions caused me to take:

 

       Quitting UCSD led to finishing Grossmont

       Finishing Grossmont led to attending SDSU

       SDSU led to quitting again, to join my buddy at said decent job, still lacking college degree

       Decent job led to awful relationship

       Awful relationship led to ill advised out of state move, and quitting of decent job

       Ill advised out of state move led to return to CA with no job and no prospects

       No job led to finding current company

       Current company led to new friend who told me about UoP

       Failed awful relationship led to getting a “revenge degree” at UoP, upon recommendation of new friend, to show awful relationship co-author what I could make of myself

       First night at UoP led to all that has happened since

 

I will never forget that first night in October of 2004 at the University of Phoenix campus off of Aero Dr in San Diego.  I scoped out the room to see what I was up against in this new environment.  It didn’t take long for my eyes to come to rest on the person asleep upstairs (at this moment, I mean…she was sitting at a table at the point in the current narrative).  I can’t really describe what happened to me at that moment…but it was akin to a punch in the gut.  A good punch, but a punch nonetheless.  I started searching the confines of my brain for any way to bring this girl into my life.  While the instructor went around the room asking everyone for a brief synopsis of their current states of being, I gathered that she lived 15 miles from my work.  This seemed like a close enough proximity to mention to her that perhaps we should be in a learning team together…I mean, I practically worked next door to her house!! (thankfully she was not that adept at county geography)…but I digress.  More on our history perhaps some other time…

 

…the point is this.  Were it not for a life full of past “regrets”…Emily wouldn’t be turning two today.  Kaitlyn wouldn’t be starting to form a personality of her own, with smiles that light up a room.  Zoey would be barking in some other house (or more likely dead from the swift boot of a less patient owner than I)!  There will always be regrets…but those regrets form the foundation of the lives we build for ourselves…of the people we become…and the people we share our lives with. 

 

 

Let’s raise a glass to regrets!!!