BEDA Day 11: Regrets

In my "Drafts" folder of my text messages on my phone, I have a whole bunch of saved messages to myself. Just little things that I think about and want to write down. Usually, the purpose of this is to make note of it, so I can use the ideas in blogs or poems or stories and sometimes unfortunately, essays I happen to by thinking about. Well anyway, I was just going through some of them for something to write about for today, but I feel kind of weird writing about them. It is weird to try to write "deep" stuff when you are not in a "deep" mood. But whatevah.

Here is the one I am going to write about today: "Every moment and choice in your life becomes part of who you are. Of your story. And it will never go away."

Now, I think what I was thinking about when I wrote this down (many months ago, I think) was this: You know when you are thinking about something, anything that happened in your life and you get that feeling of...regret. That feeling that you wish you could erase this one thing from your life. But the thing is, you cannot. Everything that you ever do ever becomes a part of you. And at the moment that something happens you think it is "not a big deal". The present always seems like "not a big deal". It feels like it will not really affect your life, but the fact that you can remember it at anytime means that it DOES affect your life. Somehow it becomes a part of who you are. Me, sitting here on this couch right now, making a mild attempt at my homework will become a part of me. One day, I might regret this. In fact, every memory I have of myself accomplishing very little becomes minutes of my life that I regret. But they are part of me, and I cannot take that back. You cannot relive your minutes, so I suppose the point is to make the most of the ones you have. What I am particularly referring to are little moments. Tiny memories. Like the decision to drink that one July night when I was 17 and missing swimming practice the next day, letting my team down. Or the decision an hour ago to stay here and accomplish nothing when I could have gone to the store with some of my housemates and bonded a bit. While I do not regret that hugely now. I am sure one day I will be upset with myself for being so antisocial this summer. Or maybe all the hours upon hours I have spent wasting time this year that will mean a poorer GPA than I would like. Or even just deciding to sleep through my morning class today. That could be the one day that means my grade and ruins something about my life. I mean. Maybe those are not great examples. But the point is that things that seem like "not a big deal" at the time are often the things that you look back on and remember and wish that you could erase them from part of your life. This is something that I definitely think middle school, high school, college age kids should think about. Sleeping with that one guy or taking that one drug might seem like no big deal at the time, but they might become the things that you are really, really ashamed of later in life and you wish you could forget. And, I mean, you can hide these things from the people in your life...but you will never really be able to erase them from your life story.