THE THINGS I DON'T REGRET

I thought I was firmly planted in the idea of living a life with no regrets. It was a philosophy I shared with Chris. No Regrets! Really, though it might not be truly possible to make it through life without a few regrets. In my dwelling on and contemplation of regrets, I’ve discovered that I have more regrets than I would like to admit to having. This list started growing after…Some of those regrets would not have changed the trajectory of the life I am currently living, but I keep them filed away for later reference anyway. Regrets don’t have to be all bad; they can be very educational. It is not my intention to list my regrets. Those regrets are mine to hold close to my chest and when I lay on my death bed, I will whisper “You will never know my regrets.” to whoever is in the room or no one before slipping away from this earth. The things I do not regret are easy.

In 2008, Chris and I had zero business buying scooters. We were broke and our credit was so bad, I had to get Dad to co-sign on my loan. It was the best spur of the moment decision we ever made. I tended to hold us back on things requiring money and timing. We’ll buy a house when the timing and our finances are more secure. We’ll have a baby when we’re financially stable. We did buy a house when the timing was right. We were never financially stable enough for a baby. My choice and for sure not a regret. Particularly now. The decision to buy the scooters at the time we bought them went against all of my practical judgements. For someone raised to be practical, to avoid buying the expensive red shoes, but instead buying the expensive shoes in a color that goes with all things, purchasing the scooters felt shocking and bad girl.

I’d do it again and again a million times over.

After Chris died, I made a choice to say yes to everything. Even if it made me uncomfortable or I didn’t really want to. I said yes to dangerous encounters and meeting strangers. I feared that if I didn’t, I’d end up a hermit, never leaving the house except for work and groceries. I’d spend every evening eating a sleeve of crackers with a can of tuna, washing it down with a bottle of wine. This might seem like a perfectly reasonable meal for a Friday night, but not every day. Saying yes got me out of the house and meeting interesting people. I have some funny stories from online dating. I didn’t end up with some strange vitamin deficiency from limiting my diet to tuna, crackers and fermented grape juice.

The caveat to always saying yes is that it becomes a habit and when you really truly want to say no, you can’t.

I am learning to pay attention to the nos that I truly want to say no to. And so far, I can say that I do not regret a single thing I’ve said no to. This probably has something to do with being focused and intentional with my no. Recently, I was asked if I wanted a snow cone. I said “No, but that doesn’t mean you can’t get one for yourself.” I still ended up getting a snow cone and I ate less than half of it before I threw it away. I don’t like them. I’ve mentioned that I do not like them a number of times, yet that doesn’t ever seem to be reason enough for the person asking. This snow cone situation is a lesson and it has taken me this many years to figure out that the things I end up regretting are the things I wanted to say no to in the first place.

With one exception.

Ten years ago this June, I sat on a bench outside of Bella Napoli’s waiting for a date to show up. I was texting with Chad and I suddenly got the feeling that I did not want be there. I remember asking Chad if I could just get up and leave. Chad said that if I wasn’t feeling up to it, then I could leave. It was the permission I needed, but just as I stood up, the date walked up to me and introduced himself. I stayed when I wanted to leave. There are regrets within the relationship, things I wish I’d made more clear, moments I wish I had stood firmly with my no, but I don’t regret staying. Because right before that date, I had just decided that I could not ever be in another relationship, that I would never feel comfortable taking my clothes off in front of another human.

Never say never.

I don’t know what prompted me to tell you all of this other than that the month of May is turning out to be a month for memory tsunamis. I keep get knocked over unexpectedly with waves. It started the second to last day in April and it feels like I might need a bigger flotation device; something better than my current set of water wings. The other night I dreamed that I was deep under water, trying to swim to the surface, but I was wrapped up in fabric. I struggled to free my arms and legs and I could feel my chest convulse with the need to breathe. Just when I thought I couldn’t hold my breath a second longer, an orca swam up from under me and pressed its nose into the arch of my foot, driving me to the surface. I woke up gasping and sweating, tangled in my bedding.

I’m not going to drown.

This might be the beginning of something.

PLACE WORDS HERE

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I did not leave the house on Saturday. Michael, in anticipation for a predicted ice/snow storm, went grocery shopping after work on Friday so that I wouldn’t have to dig out my car to go the next morning. It was a very knight in shining armor thing to do considering that grocery stores on the eve of snow storms are the worst places ever. Grocery stores on the eve of snow storms followed with a NFL Divisional game for the home team are worse than the worst places ever. Yet Michael donned his shield and sword and charged into Trader Joe’s and even refrained from opening the bottle of Bourbon he was purchasing until after he got home. He told me all about his adventures when I made it home that evening. I laughed and told him that it probably wouldn’t snow. Pellets of ice could be heard hitting the house sometime around 7:00 that evening. So we got a nice layer of ice before the five inches of snow that came down Saturday morning.

Sometimes having your very own knight isn’t so bad.

We had a snow day. I did yoga and meditation. I cleaned the bathroom and did the laundry. I even took a shower, but I did not put on a bra. I had a nice warm cup of chai with half of a special marshmallow floating in it and I finished a book and started another one. At some point during the day, Michael asked me “when’s the last time you didn’t leave the house on a Saturday?” I thought about this for a long time and could not come up with an answer. Maybe that one time in 1993 when I didn’t have a band contest, choir contest or a 4-H thing. The moon was in the seventh house and Mercury was aligned with Mars, because there had to be only one Saturday out of the year when I did not have one of the above things to do. Or all of the things. Saturdays are for leaving the house. Sundays are for CBS Sunday Morning and no bras. Definitely not on a Saturday. This whole not having to leave the house for anything on a Saturday thing was very weird and slightly disorienting. You would think that I would have used my time a little more productively. Like working on a writing project or painting the kitchen. Maybe I should have spent the day scrubbing the baseboards with a toothbrush or rearranging the living room. I am one hundred percent positive that there are chores that I have been putting off that I could have done, but I didn’t. I did the bare minimum of chores and the most creative I got was deciding what yoga poses I was going to do in my practice that morning. I have zero regrets about this and those of you who really know me know that for me to have zero regrets on basically being lazy is a pretty big milestone.

My yoga teacher who I did my teacher training with was/is a big fan of doing less. We’d have many a discussion on the subject. Doing less did not mean that you didn’t challenge yourself in a practice; you just moved a little bit slower, did a few less poses, spent twenty minutes in final relaxation. She warned us about those students who had personal lives of go, go, go. Those people tended to gravitate to a vigorous vinyasa flow kind of practice and usually skipped final relaxation. They did this because it felt normal to them. It was what they were used to even if it wasn’t necessarily what they needed. Making some one like that slow down was actually the best medicine a yoga teacher could offer them. In the years since I have been teaching, I have had those people in my classes. It takes them a bit to give into the pace of the practice, but once they do, those people become final relaxation junkies. I have never considered myself to be one of the go, go, go kind. In fact, I always lump myself into a sloth like category. If we were talking doshas, I’d put myself firmly on team Kapha. I’m solidly built and lean towards lethargy. I have been telling myself lies, giving myself a label so I’d have an excuse for being the chunky kid. I may be solidly built, but those of you have stayed with me in my house have witnessed my constant movement away from lethargy. Ask Michael about my so called naps where I close my eyes for ten minutes.

What ‘leans towards lethargy’ really means is ‘leans towards not wanting to exercise’. I don’t want to spend time on the treadmill or jumping up and down while lifting weights over my head. I do it so I am no longer the chunky kid (debatably still chunky) but stay solidly built. Spending a day lounging on the couch with a good book and doing less stuff is a need from time to time. At the very least it gives me fodder for a lengthy blog entry about nothing.