Regrets & Ridiculousness

I am someone who lives with a lot of regret. 

Literally, I regret a million things. It's weird and unsettling and frankly, very unattractive. 

I regret not trying out for the part of Belle in our sixth grade play of Beauty and the Beast. I remember standing in the doorway of the auditorium the afternoon of auditions and pacing back and forth talking myself out of it.  When I finally did sit down to wait, I waited and waited as everyone around me got up on stage and sang their song until the teacher asked if anyone else wanted to try. And I sat there some more, and said no, not me. Actually I didn't even say that because that actually just happened in my head. In reality I didn't say anything at all. 

I regret moments I should've spoken up when instead I kept my mouth shut. I regret the prom dress I let my parents talk me into because they both hated the one I actually wanted. I regret the many, many, MANY majors I chose in college, and even the many colleges I bopped around at rather than staying in one place and really thinking about my choices. I regret not going into anthropology like I wanted to because it was a random weird choice that fascinated me, because people and where we all come from and what it all means mattered to me. It still does. 

I regret that I'm not doing something more creative with my job, that I'm constantly filled with a sense of what if? what now? what next? That instead of being an outlet for me, it's a source of anxiety-- the travel time, the hours spent working at home after the work day should've ended when I could or should be spending time living life, that for one entire school year I cried almost every day because of the threats I was getting from family members of my students, so much so that I was calling out sick just because I was too filled with uneasiness about how my day would go that I couldn't make myself face it. I regret not moving across the country or making more of an effort to speak Spanish when I was younger or finding something I was passionate about and sticking with it. 

Right now, I'm awake at almost 4 am having regrets over my wedding dress, a week shy of being nine months post wedding. It's ridiculous. I am ridiculous. But here I am in all my regret filled glory, thinking of the wedding dress I said yes to and then immediately asked my mom to cancel roughly ten minutes after she dropped me off at home. Here I am. 4 am. I have to go into school tomorrow to work on my classroom for the first time all summer and I'm up thinking about something so pointless. 

George says I'm always waiting for the next big thing and in part, he's right. 

He's right. 

I am. I'm afraid of living a life full of regret. I'm afraid of waking up sixty years from now and feeling like I didn't make a difference somehow. I'm afraid of looking back at my life and feeling like I should have done more. So much more. I'm afraid of becoming someone who is so blinded by her regret that she doesn't recognize all of the beauty in every moment she gets. 

So yes. I'm someone who lives with a lot of regret. But I'm also someone who recognizes that crazy flaw in myself and how ridiculous I sound  and am working on it. I'm a work in progress. 

with a heart full of hope & a mind full of dreams.