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shellefly, prompted again today by queenofhalves and ad_lumen
If you could get one "do-over"--that is, if you could go back in time and change one decision or action you've ever made, what would it be? What do you think would be different now, in your psyche or circumstances?
This is a hard one for me, because the worst experience of my life - my six months of living with an emotionally abusive man - is also one of my key initiatory experiences, and thus not something I would change.
Part of me would very much like to un-do marriage to my now ex-husband: but that would mean un-making my daughter, whom I love deeply. I tried to write that I was willing to do that in this thought experiment, but I couldn't let those words remain in print. I could not stomach the thought of wishing her out of existence. Then there is the fact that my Ex was also the one who encouraged me to earn my first graduate degree and who supported me financially and emotionally through the process. I would love to see what my life would have been like had I been smart enough not to marry him, but I came away from the marriage with two things that are very precious to me.
[Insert pause of me thinking hard.]
At the moment, what I regret the most (and it's probably on my mind due to the conversation in comments I've been having with_storyteller_) is that I compromised the most promising writing I've ever done, my yet-unfinished novel, by starting to think too much about the hypothetical "public audience" and asked for too much input from my friends, and ended up losing the impulse of passion and gut-level truth that had propelled it. Publishing a novel is one of my oldest dreams, and this was - and is - a story that moves me. But I didn't trust myself enough, and didn't have the courage to allow the self-revelation that would have resulted from remaining entirely true to myself. I'm trying to recover it now. I'm hoping it's not a lost cause.
I've been very fortunate in my life. I don't have many regrets, and those I do have usually involve more complicated relationships than could have been changed by any one decision on my part, like the loss of the friendship of my first boyfriend, who was also my best friend for several years before and many years after our five years of off-again/on-again romance. I still have a hole in my heart where his companionship used to be.
shellefly, prompted again today by queenofhalves and ad_lumenIf you could get one "do-over"--that is, if you could go back in time and change one decision or action you've ever made, what would it be? What do you think would be different now, in your psyche or circumstances?
This is a hard one for me, because the worst experience of my life - my six months of living with an emotionally abusive man - is also one of my key initiatory experiences, and thus not something I would change.
Part of me would very much like to un-do marriage to my now ex-husband: but that would mean un-making my daughter, whom I love deeply. I tried to write that I was willing to do that in this thought experiment, but I couldn't let those words remain in print. I could not stomach the thought of wishing her out of existence. Then there is the fact that my Ex was also the one who encouraged me to earn my first graduate degree and who supported me financially and emotionally through the process. I would love to see what my life would have been like had I been smart enough not to marry him, but I came away from the marriage with two things that are very precious to me.
[Insert pause of me thinking hard.]
At the moment, what I regret the most (and it's probably on my mind due to the conversation in comments I've been having with
_storyteller_) is that I compromised the most promising writing I've ever done, my yet-unfinished novel, by starting to think too much about the hypothetical "public audience" and asked for too much input from my friends, and ended up losing the impulse of passion and gut-level truth that had propelled it. Publishing a novel is one of my oldest dreams, and this was - and is - a story that moves me. But I didn't trust myself enough, and didn't have the courage to allow the self-revelation that would have resulted from remaining entirely true to myself. I'm trying to recover it now. I'm hoping it's not a lost cause.I've been very fortunate in my life. I don't have many regrets, and those I do have usually involve more complicated relationships than could have been changed by any one decision on my part, like the loss of the friendship of my first boyfriend, who was also my best friend for several years before and many years after our five years of off-again/on-again romance. I still have a hole in my heart where his companionship used to be.
