For regret is only a later reaction reserved of things I would want to undo. Regrets are not things I despise, not people that hurt me, not the past remembrance of who and where I was. If I keep this to keep going, then I have not one regret to be spoken of. Not of my funny driving license picture, unsatisfactory upbringing, few heartbreaks out and about and knowing anyone I barely know. And it asked me, “Are our lives a product of our choices?”
You give it a thought or two. Listen to the staccatos of yes, of course yes and then no, life is a straight narration of progress. This lives we have, not anything can touch. I have understood that life is a succession of choices we decide again and again, over again. For the things you cannot choose, for instance love, you take the path unconsciously. If anything, that in itself is you instinctively choosing in your wake. I know this because I am well past choosing something so imperfectly gone rather foolishly, yet so bravely and ruthlessly.
Some decisions are made to be pathetically ruthless and hurtful. You choose it not because it felt like the right thing to do, but because you understood the deviation of each choices offered. I have let you go because I have well calculated the weight if I do not. I could’ve done the other way around. I could’ve brushed your words that night, I could’ve pretended that I didn’t understand what you wanted, I could’ve anticipated you coming home, but I chose not to. It is not worth the hurt due from overgrown desire.
The way I am right now is entirely my choice and metaphysically, yours, in a sense. I do not regret knowing you for these years.
Between something and something else, there are parts where it’s entirely for us to choose. Sometimes, it’s a linear narration with narrow possibility of choosing an outcome but even then it was ours to decide the smallest of void.
But I never chose love. No one chooses love. I chose obsession with an idea of warm attention and equalizing that obsession. I learned to want that attention. I chose to make you be able to hurt me when I could’ve done otherwise.
To hell, I do not regret any part of that. No matter the degree of ruthlessness and coarseness, bitterness of us, I have learned that we have the whole word, time and space at our disposal to find ourselves. This choice of breaking each other was integral so we’d understand what it’s like to know, to understand, to make a fine choice despite the one it’ll wrench you to emptiness. At least for me.
