Regrets – I’ve Had A Few [Too Many]
I’ve always had three regrets in life, that is until I snagged a fourth.
In fairness, from the moment I qualified as a legal adult, I found myself on a learning curve that bent well into my twenties. I effectively paced myself, picking up a new regret every three years from the end of the Eighties, but the accumulation tapered off after unloading my husband. I foolishly believed the accrual of regrets reached an end when my dark decade, known to others as the 1990s, passed into history. I even progressed far enough along my maturation that I identified the three life lessons I learned from each of my regrets. But then after successfully navigating adulthood for nearly two decades, the regrets reappeared with a vengeance.
Staring regret number four in the face, I realized my life took a drastically wrong turn. And it wasn’t just figuratively. Those years and efforts of building up to the next great chapter of my life, to my surprise resulted in the author killing off the main character. A formerly self-sufficient, focused, organized, driven woman who raised a couple humans, I suddenly found myself stranded in Dallas without a single thought about how I would survive the day, much less the rest of my life. All my plans ended there. Yep, that character was dead.
So Now What?
Words failed me. Planning eluded me. Breathing barely happened. I put all my eggs into a single basket, and then ripped a hole in the bottom of it. I allowed myself a weekend of wallowing and then forced myself to begin job hunting as if I never worked a day in my life. How do I begin to convince a total stranger to employ me when my own reflection and self-examination revealed the epitome of failure?
Now after three years of redefining myself, relocating repeatedly, restructuring my debt, and rewriting my life, I rediscovered my creativity. I’ve explored and struggled and wandered away from my life, from the life I knew, or at least thought I knew, but everywhere I look now, I don’t know what I ought to see, much less find. I just need to rediscover me, to be reborn from the remnants of my former character, to exist in the future I always wanted to reach, but never took the time to envision, because that should be easy, right? Sure. Of course. Wish me luck. Because the second half of my life starts over here.
And just wait, because there’s a fifth regret on its way.
Pam Portland 