the funny thing about regret
After a recent bout of introverted nostalgia, I stumbled upon a sudden and disturbing realization while contemplating the perpetually-repeating rhetorical question in the background of my life asking why I would often struggle with simple things that never seemed to go my way. It was fairly obvious that my lack of basic social skills was a major factor, but beyond that it remained a mystery. Now, after about 50 years, my great revelation is as simple as the question itself: Specifically, that it may, contrary to all previous assumptions, have a clear and concise answer.
I realize that stating an answer exists sounds like a far cry from understanding or even knowing that answer, but for some reason I had always stopped short of trying to pursue the topic beyond accepting the question would be left unanswered. The potential of a possible explanation prompted me to scour the internet until I came across an article on a social disorder which, to my stark surprise, felt eerily familiar. The article described it as an illness of lost opportunities where "individuals make major life choices to accommodate their illness."
I had heard rumblings of such illnesses throughout my life, but I had never identified with any of the descriptions or stereotypes accompanying them. Never a child who needed special attention, I had always technically been a functional human being, getting decent grades and even participating in a few sports. I became fairly good at emulating what I assumed to be normal, or at least a less social version of it, without ever considering why such behaviour should require any effort at all. In the many times when my façade of normality failed and cast suspicion on a concealed chronic condition, it remained undiagnosed because, back in the 1970s and 80s, the prescription and treatment for "being shy" was "get over it." End of session, minus profanity. And after I had somehow made it to the other side of high school, any latent concern for my scholastic well-being became moot because all that trouble and difficulty was over. Wasn't it? The constant refrain of "does not play well with others" on every report card I ever received should have been a red flag that warranted further investigation. But for some reason, it wasn't.
Fast-forward to now, and I am finally learning how my freshly-recognized illness must have looked from the other side of my own eyeballs. Way back about 40 years ago, I had dismissed the rare accusation that I was being rude or cruel in any given situation as circumstantial rather than an actual assessment of myself or even of what others thought of me. But tracing back, critically and methodically, I can see now through the fog of memory that I was not the person I believed I was.
I believed it was my choice never to have lunch in the high school cafeteria, where all the other kids enjoyed the best part of their day. I considered this a proud example of taking my own path rather than submitting to expectations. Instead, I developed a proclivity to privately eat my lunch in a hidden niche at the top of one of the stairwells. When a teacher discovered this forbidden activity, and I was chastened with a dreaded "blue slip," representing the first infraction in a three-strike system toward a suspension, I remember feeling relieved I was being sent to the principal's office, not the cafeteria. Never once considering that I could have used some of those social skills that would be forcibly instilled if I could just swallow my misguided pride and show up for lunch, even if only on rare occasions.
I received my second "blue slip" from the same teacher for the same reason about a month later.
All of this retrospective leaves me with a looming sense of time, imagining all the friendships I could have had - was supposed to have had - with some very good, kind people who I respect immensely if only I had not ignored, insulted, or ran away from them. In my mind, if not in reality, I had always heeded Gibby Haynes' warning that “it's better to regret something you have done than to regret something you haven't done,” but this was different: These were not things I did or did not do, but paths I chose not to take. It is easy to justify that one path is as good as another before you know where either will lead, but my choices were not made freely. At each crossroad in my life, the brief moment for rational contemplation was subtly subverted by an intractable instinct, distorting the social elements of either choice until they each became only a trepidation of an imagined inevitable betrayal or rejection. In a split second, an assault of dozens of worst-case scenarios would erode my will and compel me to take the less social option or evade the situation altogether. And though these fears were almost always entirely unfounded, every one of these unconsciously compromised choices led me farther away from my natural and now unrealized path.