Regretting regrets. Ha, I'm clever.

Regrets are hard things to own up to. Admitting we have regrets means that we admit we did something wrong, and, for the most part, no one actually LIKES being wrong and it rarely has a good connotation. I feel like having regrets about actions one did or didn't make is part of life and that owning up to them is important to personal growth and fulfillment, or whatever new self-help phrase is popular at the moment. I have regrets. Everyone does, but I've been thinking about mine a lot lately and how they've shaped my life to where I am right now, and what I need to do different to get to where I really want to be. I'm sharing my regrets with you. Not all, just some. But sharing them none the less.

First, though, I'm listing some things I don't regret, just because I know that this post makes it seem like I'm really down on myself and I'm really not. I'm just hyper-aware of the consequences of some of my actions recently. These are not all the regrets I don't have- that list would be in the thousands- but just some I don't have right now off the top of my head.

1. I don't regret getting married young when I'm not at ALL established in my career or even anywhere close to where I want or need to be. I truly with all my heart believe AC is the perfect balance to my sometimes impulsiveness and hyperactivity and that our marriage is “one for the ages.” Getting certain life goals done in a timely manner will be harder than if I hadn't gotten married now. It would have been more cost efficient and maybe I would have saved more money if I had waited a few years until I had done all the international travel on my employer's dime, getting my Masters degree and spending money on things I want instead of making those decisions together, but I don't regret it a bit. I can't imagine not having AC as my husband and/or "settling" for anyone else.

2. I don't regret taking as many photography or ROTC classes as I did in college. They were the thing that kept me at UK my sophomore year and in many ways the dark room (and armory) will always be a safe place – they were definintely my safe places in Lexington and there was nothing better to me than printing til 5 AM even if I had an econ test at 9 AM the next morning, or taking the admin guys cupcakes before I went to class. I want so badly to have access to a darkroom here because I miss it, and because it would make me feel more at home when I am so far from mine. I wasn't a photo major and I didn't contract ROTC, and while I don't regret taking either set of classes, it was still a large chunk of my schedule.

3. I don't regret renting our apartment sight unseen. We had an unsuccessful scouting trip in April and came back to Lexington without a place to live. And then we saw our current place on craigslist and just went for it. That was a scary decision to make, especially since we'd seen some pretty awful apartments in New Haven for some REALLY scary prices. Completely impulsive, and I'm really glad we did. We live close to AC's school, on the bus route, close to downtown, in a FANTASTIC neighborhood with fantastic neighbors (who occasionally throw impromptu stoop parties by smoking out the whole building with a burning chipotle pepper)(it was a really good time, actually). I advise this only if you like to occasionally take big, big chances and you get lots of pictures of the apartment and the landlord is responsive to your calls and emails right off the bat.

But now we come to regrets. And admitting regrets is scary, like I talked about. I have many regrets, but I'm not going to share all of mine because again, the list would at least be in the hundreds.

1. I will always probably regret (just a little bit) not contracting ROTC when I had the chance. yes, super girly and silly me took military science/ROTC classes for the first two years of college. I can take apart and put back together an M16A machine gun- fun party fact. It was a great opportunity, and I loved taking the classes and getting to go on the FX I went on. I loved so much about it, and yet I didn't contract. Of course, if I had, I wouldn't have worked at Big Corporate Bookstore and that seems odd- I consider some of my coworkers to be some of my most favorite people in the whole world, R especially! And I wouldn't have met and married AC and that is unimaginable in every kind of heartbreaking way. But I think I would have learned a lot of discipline and control that I don't posses right now and need to learn; I think I would be a whole less naive about things than I am. The teachers/cadre in “military science” were awesome and they'll always hold a special place in my heart, and I know they were disappointed in me when I quit.

2. I regret not choosing a better major. I regret not choosing one that would offer more career options/opportunities. I loved my creative writing classes and some of my English classes, but they were fall back classes when I didn't know what else to take and I just fell into my English major. They weren't challenging, the literature classes weren't especially interesting and they aren't at all useful in the real world. I regret not being more proactive in thinking about what I wanted to do when I “grow up” and I'm paying the price big time now. I'm itching to go back to school to take the classes I actually need to get into grad school. My parents are probably shocked right now, since I was the worlds worst student from age 5 to college graduation, but I want to go back.

3. I regret a lot of things about our wedding.I regret how I acted towards my mom during the wedding planning- I didn't want a wedding to begin with, truthfully, but I didn't think I was ever going to be able to get out of it, I was pretty much the biggest brat ever and that is not okay. Our wedding was NOT huge, I think our final person count was 152. I'm so thankful to my parents for paying for the wedding and our wedding was unbelievably beautiful in ways that I couldn't even imagine. But I regret not having a smaller wedding that cost less and had fewer people- I didn't get to see everyone. My biggest regret involving our wedding, though, is not taking better care of myself beforehand. I dislike all but maybe 5 of the pictures of me from our wedding. I can't stand them, actually- it's no fault of my photographers because they did a BEAUTIFUL job, but I was heavy, almost the second heaviest I've ever been, and that does not make me happy or joyful when I look at those pictures. I've been putting off looking at all of them and I haven't watched our video because it makes me ill to see myself on film. I didn't take care of myself- I was stressed from planning and fielding phone calls from a million vendors asking me what I wanted (I didn't care), stressed about trying to plan our honeymoon and when we would take it, stressed about our impending move RIGHT after the wedding/honeymoon... everything combined left me completely overwhelmed and in bad, bad shape.

4. This is my biggest regret. I regret how I reacted to my grandfathers lung cancer and subsequent death. I regret not talking to him after finding out the cancer was terminal 5 months before he died. My memory of him is much different than how my parents talk about him, but he was one of my most favorite people in the world and to this day talking about how I dealt with everything makes me cry. Yes, including now. From him (and my mom), I inherited a love of power tools, and I wish so much he was still alive to help me with projects I might need help with. I don't know if he picked it out or if my grandmother did, but that last Christmas, there was a present under the tree from him- a bracelet from Brighton, and I wore it on my wedding day. He couldn't come to Atlanta for Christmas, but he was there. I was 16 when he died, but I should have known better than to believe someone when they promise to get better- that's not anything you can control and I regret every moment of my reaction.

Those are the big ones, at the moment, the ones that are really affecting my life either directly (the job thing) or are always in the back of my mind (my grandfather). I like the quote I'm about to share, because it reminds me that I need to look forward instead of backward and that I need to get a grip on myself and work towards what I want instead of wallowing in self-pity. I've got a lot of open doors right now, and I need to focus on those instead of the ones that might be closed...

"When one door closes, another opens; but we often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door that we do not see the one which has opened for us."

- Alexander Graham Bell