Regrets
I have more regrets than a few and yes they are worth mentioning.
Sorry Mr. Sinatra, we can’t all be you.
On those gray days,
the times when the dopamine level has shifted a bit,
those regrets can be monumental and consuming.
This is one of those times,
things slightly out of sync,
brain flow not quite right.
A weight on my shoulders,
a dark cloud that surrounds me,
a window that I look from to see so much remorse.
I should not have slept with Rebecca.
What was the talk after that debacle?
I can name a large group that would have been sitting on the edge of their seats to hear the details,
grinning and chuckling as the mental images took shape.
What did they think then?
And the times our paths crossed through the years with never a word spoken.
I am sure at some point she respected me.
Gone after that evening,
reduced to, perhaps, clownish and buffoonery status.
In that dorm room with Diane was a bad idea,
embarrassing to this day.
What was I doing there?
Where was any of the common sense and self-respect that I may have had?
I was in the wrong place,
out in space,
dislodged and disconnected from reality.
She deserved better,
not the bizarre set of circumstances that held her hostage.
The relationship with Carol puzzles me.
Again the talk, the grins, and the questions.
All those who knew that this was not right, even me on some inaccessible level.
The two late night sexual encounters at Mohonk
bring my head down.
Names that can not even be remembered today.
Just late night drunken encounters in a bar somewhere,
when it seemed right at the time.
With each, there is a sadness and shame at having
crossed a line and succumbed to such impulses and poor judgement.
The idea of having what I could not have at a younger age just
too overwhelming.
Having that kind of female,
interested, available, open,
beyond any resistance that I was capable of.
I never stood a chance,
There was never a question about my decisions, until later.
Now there are nothing but questions,
And regrets.
And having married so late,
no children, grandchildren.
Deep regrets to say the least.
During those years it never occurred to me that I would live to
feel great remorse over those choices and decisions.
But I have and I do.
Seventy now, the count down, taking stock,
the realization of coming up short so many times in so many ways.
I know the hidden wounds that were there,
the background from which these choices were made.
I understand the incapacity that most likely existed,
the flawed thinking and emotional disability.
With all this understanding, still regrets.
Older, the dye cast, almost all in place.
No opportunity to go back, no second chance.
And those haunting memories that are there just waiting for another gray day.
A chemical/electrical short somewhere in that mass of neural matter that triggers this slide into that dark place.
That disgusting, sickening place.
Why can’t they just be mistakes?
Accepted, laughed off, self-forgiveness given.
Young, too wild, immature, nihilistic.
Maybe on a real good day that works.
But that luxury does not often come my way.
How things have turned out and what has not come to be,
a sad reality almost always with me.
A shadow, a cloud, a darkness all waiting to descend and consume
what is there to feed on.
There are too many reminders of what happened,
of what could have been.
Too many holes in the wall of defense and protection,
an absence of a fine tuned skill set that would allow forgiveness and
acceptance of one’s weaknesses to prevail.
Happiness is measured in the depth that these regrets are buried at any give time.
Never neutralized or stripped of their impact,
just buried, covered up to reappear some time later when it is one of those times, or a ghostly reminder happens to appear from nowhere.
Regrets, I am afraid, to the last day.