We've all made mistakes & have regrets yet how different would your life have been if

[SusanJillParker]

We've all made mistakes & have regrets yet how different would your life have been if

We've all made mistakes. We all have regrets. Yet, how different would your life have been if...

You went to college. You graduated college.

You married someone else. You stayed single. You divorced.

You lived elsewhere.

You had not driven drunk.

You weren't arrested.

You weren't a writer.

You stayed sober. You remained clean.

You exercised.

# # #

My life would have been so different had I not been emotionally, physically, and sexually abused.

I never would have dropped out of high school.

I've spent a lifetime paying for someone else's mistakes and trying to fix things that weren't my fault.

Only, somethings can't be fixed. Somethings always remain broken. Somethings, no matter what we do, remain the same.

My life would have been so different if I had a father who loved me and a mother who wasn't an incestuous whore, a prostitute, a stripper, and a drunk.

"Ah, I feel better getting all of that off my chest. So, what about you? This is your chance to purge. Stand up! Speak your mind. Tell me, no, tell everyone, how different your life would have been if..."

 

[loquere]

Mistakes are necessary, adapt learn improve dominate.

 

[loquere]

Try+fail=Learn. Try+fail=Learn. Try+fail=Learn. Try+succeed=Billionaire!

 

[loquere]

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;
If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!

 

[GforGraham]

Yes I regret saying I might rate some stories as 1 star. Stupid is as stupid does.

 

[NotWise]

We've all made mistakes. We all have regrets. Yet, how different would your life have been if...

Oh God. Could you keep it to yourself for a while? Take a break. Find a more constructive outlet. I haven't even been here very long and I already find you hard to tolerate -- it's not that you're the worst character on the forum, its just that you are the most insistently needy.

 

[Gorza]

Thanks for sharing. I'm listening.

Cradling an ex's baby (not mine) gave me insight into what might have been. I perhaps would be more senior in my field, having published more, married with a couple of kids.

Instead personal and family meltdown (I don't want to go into more detail) led me to run off and join the Foreign Legion. My adjutant told me his job was to dismantle me psychologically and rebuild me as a legionnaire, and that's what he did.

I was so driven when I got out of the army that I built a career, but romantically I was impossible to live with. One girlfriend who lived with me told me it was like living in army barracks! Although I think she quite liked it when she worked out I would respond automatically to orders!

I'm far more human now than I was; I've worked a lot of shit out. I'm now in my early forties, and have settled into the pattern of a serial dater. One male colleague joked that I had the sex life of a twenty year old. I thought better of telling him what my sex life was like two decades ago.

Those mistakes and regrets are part of me, like old scars. I know all the words to Non, je ne regrette rien. It's not so sexy when it's being sung by thirty tuneless legionnaires on the march! The sentiment of the song is defiant. It's the acknowledgement that that shit made me, and the only me is this one. Sometimes wrong turns get you into trouble, sometimes they lead to scenic routes. You can never tell which is which. Where we're born and to whom is a fortune beyond our control, so is much of the rest of life. But that doesn't make me fatalistic. It tells me that little things that we can change are the currency of life's heroes. That's how I tell my story.

 

[NOIRTRASH]

I got my looks and my smarts and my pedigree and my health from the same people who rained on my parade.

 

[SusanJillParker]

I never would have married my ex-husband. A bad, Boston cop, he knew where to hit me to not leave a mark.

He knew I wanted children and whenever I was ovulating, we fucked like rabbits. Only, he couldn't impregnate me. I figured it was his drinking.

Then, after we signed the divorce papers, after the lawyers left the room, he told me, "I had a vasectomy just before I married you. I didn't want kids."

If I had a gun, I would have shot him.

My biggest regret is not having children.

 

[NOIRTRASH]

Most shit simply happens, some of it we stalk till we find it and get devoured.

 

[SusanJillParker]

Most shit simply happens, some of it we stalk till we find it and get devoured.

I'd rather just flush it down the toilet and wash my hands of it.