Sideways Taco of Regret

I have lost track of nearly all our old neighbors. Social media keeps a couple of delicate connections distantly thrumming, but that’s all.

My newest friends, the ones who have not moved in decades, enjoy talking about their deep connections. They discuss diapering one another’s kids, and staying close through neighborhood infidelities, weather disasters and weapons charges.

These stories pain me–no exaggeration, they give me a physical pain. It’s exactly the way you feel when you eat a taco too quickly, sense that it is somehow sideways, and then realize you will just politely suffocate right there in the summertime drive thru.

That feeling might be called envy, but I now know it as regret.

If we hadn’t moved so many times, we’d have those kind of neighbors, wouldn’t we? No, probably not.

–Don’t eat your children by mege gardner

I’m having a crowd of regrets following me around for at least two days now. Like any crowd, there are a couple of them who are a little larger, a little brasher, and with questionable fashion choices. Sigh.

They heckle me and remind me that all our upcoming weddings would be a helluva lot simpler if I had just stayed married the first time. There again, I would be going to none of these weddings if I had decided not to get married at all. Likewise, if I didn’t decide to make a bunch of people, I wouldn’t get to watch them get married. The regrets, standing around unmarried, just snicker at me.

Is fate just a short word for the place where you find yourself?

Stupid choices have their place in the world. It’s like an immunization from future stupid choices to make stupid choices.

Whatever flavor your choice are, they all become more important as time goes on. When you’re twelve, the choice of shoes is a small thing, but when you’re 112 it’s a fateful thing to put on the pumps for one more promenade.

Having lots of practice in making choices and observing where the debris lands can give us all sorts of confidence in our choices. Maybe some of the confidence is warranted, sometimes.

I’d like to embrace my regrets, even the stinky ones. Hosing them off and looking at them from the best angle would make it easier, but maybe it shouldn’t be easy. Maybe I just have to sit around with these clowns and understand why they are following me. It’s entirely possible that these clowns are going to get between me and some much worse clowns.

It is no accident that where some people have demons, I have clowns.

I keep telling them I have no intention of doing anything funny. Nope. No funny business here. I have worked out all my funny before. Now, I know better than to tinker with other people when I’m bored. Is that true though? Am I a danger to the status quo? Shit. That’s almost certainly true.

We can’t just sit around–of course we can, but even the act of just waiting for things to happen is a choice.

I expect many people are cranky right now because it dawns on them that a year of extra free time didn’t do what they thought it would do for them. Having fewer choices of what to do with your time has a way of showing you how poorly you decide these things.

It’s okay!! You have plenty of time until you don’t!!

What are you scared of? What do you love? If you choose to work on the things you love, you’ll definitely have fewer regrets, fewer sideways tacos, and fewer clowns in your closet.

Love,
yermom

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