Regrets? I've had (More Than) a Few. What About You?: Everyday Magic, Day 1,138

"I wish someone would ask me about my regrets," one of my friends recently said to me.

"What are your regrets?" I asked.

She told me, but those are hers to tell, not mine. No worries though because I have plenty of regrets to talk about, most in the flavor of "Love is never having to say you're sorry" = bullshit. Or another friend told me, William Burroughs used to joke/not joke that every day he lived was another day full of regrets.

Here's some of mine:

I don't regret adopting the late and sweet Moxie

I regret not spending more time with animals and all the dogs I missed out on flirting with.

I regret sending emails where I way-over-explained or over-defended myself.

I regret choosing the stiff, hot pink striped fabric to sew into the halter sundress in 1975 that made me look like a triangle dipped in Pepto-Bismol.

I regret the thousands of extra times I ran the experiment of eating what I knew would make my sick in varieties of "Sure, I'm lactose-intolerant, but surely I can have this big bowl of ice cream now" or "Coffee after 4 p.m. won't keep me up most of the night this time."

I do not and have never regretted marrying Ken or having our children.

I regret eating most junk food with the exception of Cheetohs occasionally.

I sincerely regret the times I've tried to get someone I love to change.....although I'll likely have continued reason to regret this in the future no matter how hard I try to keep my mouth shut.

I regret all the bad chocolate I ate although I do not regret all the cold pizza.

I regret not listening well enough......at least 10,000 times.

I do not regret listening to every nuance hundreds of times in all the songs on Joni Mitchell's "Blue"as well as Glen Campbell's "Wichita Lineman" and Kansas's "Dust in the Wind" when I was a teenager.

I regret burning the garlic bread.

I regret the thousands of times I overcommitted and wiped myself out and also the hundreds of times I didn't step up when I should have. Mostly I regret not having the foresight and patience to discern the difference.

I regret arguing with my husband about meaningless shit, even if he started it.

I regret anyone I hurt inadvertently, and even worse, knowingly, except in cases when it was necessary to hold thoughtful, compassionate, and healthy boundaries.

I never regret dancing on any table......or dancing in just about any way, even when I did an interpretative dance to "Mr. Bojangles" in junior high gym class. I do regret not dancing when I could have.

I regret the enormous bandwidth I gave to decades of fretting about my weight and making plans to lose weight instead of just listening to my body and letting myself be the creature I am.

I definitely regret the two times I dropped acid and the time I ate a bunch of pot brownies because I wanted chocolate. I do not regret writing 40 illegible pages of poetry while on something else.

I regret hitting and killing two deer in the last forty years and also the deer that hit my car that one time.

I regret oversleeping on important days and then rushing around or making other late, but I don't regret bringing our kids a little late to school most days even if school didn't start until 8:45 a.m.

I regret the big collar in 1972 but not the rose wedding dress in 1985.

I don't regret slipping out of Yom Kippur services when I was teen to eat French fries (we were supposed to be fasting) with a new friend.

I regret just about all the times I yelled at my kids, even when they yelled first.

I regret going up too high too fast in the mountains and then spending hours sick as a dog with altitude sickness.

Oddly enough, I don't regret anything much I've written and especially not the act of being in time by writing.

I regret all the clothes I bought that I didn't like or couldn't breathe in because I thought it made me look thinner (and I'm glad to have donated that clothing).

I regret all the not-truly-excellent-or-important books I forced myself to read.

I don't regret using the F-word except when I could see it offended someone. I especially won't regret the new variation I just learned: Fuckadoodledoo.

I regret seeing the movie "The Black Swan" although my daughter did tell it had a happy ending.

I regret buying that Audi with what the seller said was "a Hollywood muffler," which was so loud, I had to return it. I don't regret Ken and me breaking a contract on a house so small we were sure living there would ruin our marriage.

I don't regret chemotherapy, radioactive implants in my eye for five days, or all manner of other treatment I did to save my life during the two times I had cancer.

I regret long walks on too-hot days in the big sun without a hat and the migraines that followed. But I don't regret 99% of the walks I've taken alone or with loved ones.

I don't regret stumbling over words when giving a poetry reading or leading Shabbat services. I do regret reading Hebrew like a drunk baby despite all the opportunities I had to learn it.

While I don't always like having a mind particularly adept at fixating on things (although it's a great quality for finishing books), I don't regret that this is how this is just how I am. As a friend once said, "It's a design element," so why regret it?

I regret not officially dropping the 5-hour biology class my senior year of college when I wasn't attending said class at all.

I don't regret all the books, fabric, art supplies, or rocks I've collected but I do periodically give some away.

I regret all the times I hardened my heart against people who needed help, or even more so, people who just wanted to love me.

I don't regret any loans I've ever signed or co-signed for, but I sincerely regret bouncing many checks in my youth and several credit cards that levied big fees and took hours of phone call mazes to cancel.

I regret wasted time doom-scrolling, especially when I could have been here on the porch, listening to thunder and Carolina wrens.

I regret the usual cliche-things: aiming to be right instead of kind, not taking the time to smell the roses (and lilac and peonies), and sweating the small stuff (because it's all small stuff).

Mostly, I regret the waste of imagination on worry.

I could go on, but then I'll regret all the time I spent writing regrets instead of living the opposite. But what about you?