Moving Past Regret

As I read the prompt, my stomach constricts.  Memories race through my mind; pain, shame, embarrassment, fear all twist my stomach into knots.

Write about my worst memory?

I have some I don’t even like to think about.

Doubts about participating in this week’s prompt bubble to the surface immediately.

Other members of the Write On Edge community talk me back into the land of the rational, gently reminding me that writing can be about the process as well as the end result.

I breathe again.

I write, using a frightening memory, one that taunted me with the realization of mortality for a long, long time.  But it’s not my worst memory.  Perhaps not even one of the top five.

Rattled loose, those memories bounce around my brain, poking at old scars, testing for weakness.  They’re joined by other memories, moments I’d brushed aside, tucked into Pandora’s box to suffocate and wither away from the light in which I attempt to bathe my life.

Provoked, my imagination roars to life in the silence of our bedroom, Ryan’s breathing rhythmic in the darkness, steady and safe, warm.

What if?

What if I would have made better choices?  Like that one, at sixteen?  Or that one, at nineteen? Or that one? Or that?

How would my life be different if I would have been braver? Smarter? More confident? Less stubborn?

My eyes are wide, staring at the ceiling, enough light shining in the darkness to outline the fan whooshing and whirling above the bed.

What if those memories, my memories, the ones I shuttered in my heart instead of releasing them onto the page, could be undone?

Most of my terrible memories were my own doing – my actions and my decisions and my lack of consideration.

I close my eyes, expecting regret to wash over me, to blanket me in past hurts, finding new places to prick through my skin.

Instead, I feel humbled.  Blessed.

Each of those bad decisions, those hurts guided me along the path that is my history.

Without those hurts, I wouldn’t have been in the position to make other choices.

Good choices.

Choices and decisions made out of love and hope and belief in something beautiful.

Choices and decisions that led to this life, my life, that I love.

Choices and decisions that led to this family, my family, that I adore.

Finally, my stomach untwists, my eyes close.

I fall asleep.

Do you feel regret about past decisions?  How do you think that regret affects the choices you make now?

I've been hurt.

I've hurt others.

But regret?

I just can't regret the path that led me to this.

This post is part of the Just Be Enough Monday link-up, where everyone is welcome to share their stories, both seemingly small and impossibly monumental, about feeling "enough". 

The link-up is part of a cancer-fighting collaboration between Just Be Enough, Bellflower Books, and Crickett's Answer for Cancer.  For every 20 links, Bellflower Books will provide a $75 gift certificate for a gorgeous, personalized memory book for a family chosen through Crickett's Answer.  Our goal is to be able to provide ten women the opportunity to receive a special book created by family and friends that will be treasured not only by the brave women fighting breast cancer, but by their families as well, so please, please share your stories today and come back next Monday and the one after that to share again!