regret

When someone you love says goodbye you can stare long and hard at the door they closed and forget to see all the doors God has open in front of you.

You remember the dialogue you had with yourself, you can quote the emotion word for word, as if you__e still there, as if it matters that you can map in detail the geographies of regret.It starts with a hope and ends with a turn of the stomach: a cringe at the excuses you make for your heart, a momentary forever you remember on alternate days over coffee and novels that hit too close to home.You cry because you know the point at which you could have turned back but didn__, could have taken time by the throat and resisted, could have ignored the phone, answered that message, said no, said yes, said nothing, smiled - whatever it is that you didn__ do. But by the time that moment ends, it is over and you are in too deep, wondering why there exists no rewind button for the soul, no second chance for the petty player, no backup plan for those who risk everything on nothing, all at once.

He had felt viable being near her or knowing she was listening to him or having the comfort of their casual meeting within a dream. With her, he simply and effortlessly felt better. They all felt better, unburdened, cared for, and heard. Being connected to her eased his suffering as he gave her his. It was only when she began to drown in the cumulation of commingled torments that to save whatever part of her was left, she disconnected, and when she did, his suffering returned and remained with him longer than she had. But instead of saving herself, it was the additional burden of her own anguish from letting them all go that took her breath and inevitably pulled her under.

The past is something that can not be fixed, but sets an example to fix the present to better the future.

There is nothing for you to go back and live over, or fix, or feel regret about now. every part of your life has unfolded just right. And so -now- knowing all that you know from where you now stand, now what do you want? The answers are now coming forth to you. Go forth in joy, and get on with it.

Rules for Living by Olivia Joules14) Sometimes you just have to go with the flow.and then the new one from Elsie, added at the bottom:15) Don't regret anything. Remember there wasn't anything else that could have happened, given who you were and the state of the world at that moment. The only thing you can change is the present, so learn from the past.

Sometimes you cannot clear the past completely. You must live alongside your sorrow.

The past wasn__ a guest you could ask to leave when you tired of its company. No, the past put up its feet and meant to stay.

you can't change the past,Aunt Lou used to say.Oh, but I wanted to;that was the one thing I really wanted to do

It does no good to regret the past... yet regret remains just the same.

He was a stranger here. The people who might remember him would certainly not welcome him. His old gang had cast him out, along with all of the former friends and parents. The suburban landscape of hypocrisy, so hated in his youth, beheld again and with it, old feelings that motivated him through life more than he would ever admit. Every turning point in life, already decided by all the events here

Maybe the problem with holding onto memories so tightly is that they don__ allow us to make room for the future. Maybe the gentle decay of the past is a blessing that dulls the sharp blade of regret, allowing the possibility of rebirth.

Drugs may know how to numb a brain, but the past never forgets to resurface.

Time was passing like a hand waving from a train I wanted to be on. I hope you never have to think about anything as much as I think about you.

Who would awaken the past? It shines like a sunriseAnd cuts like a fine blade.

You cannot see the past that did not happen any more than you can foresee the future.

There is no more disastrous mania, no more dangerous whim, than the speculation over roads not taken.

She needs a new journal. The one she has is problematic. To get to the present, she needs to page through the past, and when she does, she remembers things, and her new journal entries become, for the most part, reactions to the days she regrets, wants to correct, rewrite.