Riot of Regret

I watched Brokeback Mountain again. I’ve seen it numerous times and each time, it tears me up in some new way. I keep thinking about how the specific time in which we live often dictates HOW we live. And not just the place in time, but the area, too, whether it be California or the Midwest, Wyoming or Texas.

I wish those boys could’ve been together how they wanted. I think about their fictionalized family members and their families’ non-fictionalized and very real pain. Because sometimes the world asks us to be what we cannot be, and when we can’t, the person we were born to be will find a way out. Trust me on that. Affairs are had, hearts are broken, and we all stand in the aftermath of the lies we’ve ALL told ourselves. “It will be okay. It will work out. God is in control.”

I wasn’t the affair-type. My attempts to be what I could not be incited a riot in my body. A battery of strange illnesses began as my body tried to tell me that something was wrong. This isn’t uncommon. Stress and anxiety over such things can lead to panic attacks, depression, mood disorders, headaches, sleep problems, high blood pressure and heart disease. When disillusionment settles in, it will try to convince us that we’re living the good life, even if we’re not. But deep within, we know the truth…

It doesn’t feel right because it isn’t right.

A few weeks ago, I read a book called Maurice, by E.M. Forster … the same guy who wrote “Howard’s End” and “A Room with a View.” The themes in Maurice are very similar story to those in Brokeback Mountain; two young men fall in love but can’t be together, and an arduous search begins to understand the homosexual feelings they both have. There are differences, the main being that while Brokeback Mountain was originally released as a short story in 1997, E.M. Forster wrote Maurice in 1913, although it wasn’t published until 1971, a year after Forster’s death. He waited to have it published because he was wary of the fallout. God, how I admire his courage. Can you imagine writing a piece like that in 1913? Digging into something so vulnerable at a time when living Forster’s truth was against the law.

While we’re still young, we attempt to talk about what we want in life, or who we are. We bring it up to family or friends, but struggle to put our thoughts together in a way that makes sense to them. We don’t have the knowledge or understanding but we know something is different. And there is a borderline around us that we can’t see past. The world inside the borderline is the only world we know—a limited view that doesn’t include people like us.

In time, we become worn down. We expect there’s no way out. So, many of us accept our lives as they are. We’re sensitive. We’re kind. We’re fearful of hurting others. So, we press on. We lean into life inside the borderline. And everyone seems better for it, except us.

The level of regret is high for those who get to the end of their lives and have made poor decisions or lived with broken relationships. Can you imagine the regret of denying who you are? Being an old man or woman, sitting in your chair and knowing that long ago, you abandoned yourself for no good reason. That you never lived your life on your own terms.

It was my greatest fear … that I would squander the gift of life.

Regret is a word I’ve had issues with for many years. This morning I read something about regret by poet, Abigail Thomas.

“The tiny perimeter in which I had failed to live my life had all but disappeared, and maybe forgiveness seeped under the door, or grace through the open windows…”

The borderline. I failed to live there, too. And even though it wasn’t right for me, I have regrets. I think I always will.

In AA there’s a saying (a promise actually) that says, “I will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it.” It’s the one promise in the program I could never find true alignment with.

I don’t think regret is terrible. It isn’t the worst that could happen to us. Although for many of us, regret is a real fear. We’ve heard too many old people tell us if they could do it all over again, they’d take better care of their teeth, or spend less time in the sun, or they would’ve stayed with their former partner, worked less, loved more, taken more risks. It’s regret.

But we can’t live our lives as if we’ve done it all perfectly. None of us has … or can. And the solution isn’t talking ourselves into having no regrets by way of the lessons we’ve learned. Some of the lessons I’d trade for getting it right the first time. And that, to me, is regret. She’s not so bad as we make her out to be.

I think maybe she’s like one of those really good friends who tells us the truth, but still loves us as if whatever we’ve done never happened. Even so, I’d prefer she be one of those friends I see sparingly. The “pick up where we left off” kind.

Her wisdom isn’t shocking. Mostly, I already know what she’s going to tell me. But I need her to say it anyway. Because I need to hear it, to accept it, and then decide whether moving forward with her advice is worth the trouble.

Sometimes it hasn’t been. Other times, I might’ve died if I hadn’t.

Regret exists, period. It will be a part of all our stories. So, the real question is, what kind of regret? What storylines are we following that carry amounts of regret that aren’t survivable? And which ones make life manageable, livable…and still good?

Choose your regrets wisely, or they will choose you.