1.16.2006

no woman no cry


i had the most interesting conversation last night about regrets and what we do to each other that seems to make sort-of-sense at the time but later on becomes this festering bruise you can do nothing about. this picture was taken in 1998, these are the people I hung out in high school. i can name each one for you, i can tell you grade school back stories. but to be depressingly honest, i can't tell you much about their lives now, and more to the point, what i might have loved or hated about them eight years ago. i don't remember all the little parts of our whole.

i do have some regrets, it's impossible not to, but mostly i'm the type to realize that if we meditate on who we were when we made the decision, it made sense at the time. in other words, "if i could only go back..." i'd still be that person i was then, and i'd probably pull the same shit with the same consequences.

if i could give out one healing comment, one thing to say to people i've let down, it would be that i can see now the ways i was immature. i understand now what i didn't have the capacity to say, where i should have said please, where i should have said no, where i should have said if you tell me you love me i won't leave. where i could have confronted instead of backing off. where i could have kept my mouth shut and didn't. one time where i did keep my mouth shut and the next night, he died. i've gained and lost a lot over the years.

i'm only now in my life starting to realize how my mistakes shape me differently than my successes. how, as it was put in Vanilla Sky, without the bitter the sweet won't ever be so sweet. i've always felt the weight of decisions, the decision to leave iowa, to go to boston, the decisions towards money, towards posessions, towards travel, towards building a life i never thought i'd have.

and now with the upcoming possibility of minneapolis, and the upcoming birthday – 25 next month – last night's conversation was well-timed. i feel like all my baggage is in a garbage truck and i'm poised over the big red button to unburden it. where will it go? what will stick to the sides, unyielding? i am almost healed.

2 comments:

cassie said...

Wow, that picture seems like a lifetime ago... I guess, in a lot of ways, it really was.

lisa said...

yeah, no kidding. it feels more recent than it is. eight years is substantial, but famaliarity doesn't fade (even as contact does).