Regret and hope
A super amazing pal very-wisely told me that what I need to do to move on from this pseudo-relationship-mess that happened on and off for the last four years is to come to a point where I don't regret anything from the past.
No more "if only"s, no more "but if"s, no more justifying what he did or I did, no more wishing I would've or he could've or trying to understand him or me or the human heart-mind-soul just a little bit more deeply. I think the thing for me isn't so much regret about the past, but regret over the future. The unanswered questions, never fully trying to be who we should have at least tried to be. Who will I think of when I'm with someone else, when an image of his stories or my emails or our time together emerges, each word dead-bolted into precision-accessible corners of my mind, bleeding colorfully beyond the nicely-delineated borders that I wish I'd drawn. I gave my mind, my time, my spiritual virginity, with such a profundity that it will never, ever, ever, impossibly ever change the fact that I love him and will until the day I die. This isn't something youthful and naive that I'm saying, that I lived, this is something that happens once, sometimes, to some people. Random acts of holy-chaotic crazy-divine forces allow some people to experience it twice.
However.
House said something very vivid in Season 4:
"You'll give up the chance of something real so that you can hold on to hope.
The thing is, hope is for sissies." -- Dr. Gregory House
~
Hope is regret, but in the future. Regret is wishing what was, wasn't. Hope is wishing what will be, won't be what currently is.
You should be quick to point out that hope can be wonderful at times, with our current presidential election as an example--while there are many reasons to be cynical about the future, there are just as many reasons to not be, and one should be content in the reasons to not be cynical. Regret can be equally as wonderful in that it means that you are able to connect with who you've been and who you've become in a grounded, non-lackadaisical way, and it brings responsibility to your future. Both can be wonderful, powerful things.
The point of hope being for sissies, though, is that in many cases it's just about as productive as regret. It prevents living. Really living. And changing. When you wait for whatever it is you want to happen, you end up waiting around for other things in the process, ignoring life in the process, not doing what you could do in the process, waiting your life away. Deriving pleasure from the wait is not as rich of a living-process as deriving pleasure from what you could be doing while you wait. Good things do happen to those who wait, but better things happen to those who grab life by the balls and all the while keep their sights on what they're waiting for. Hope can be overly passive. And, sometimes, if the thing you're waiting for is meant to happen, it will happen--but, again, waiting for it to happen isn't necessarily going to make it happen: actually, it might make chances worse. In my case, it _will_ make it worse because if I try to deal with this mess again and am not strong enough to deal with it, there's no sense in trying to bring change to such a situation when one is not strong enough to deal with it: it would just make things worse. So, I have to put hope behind me and change...or at least put it firmly in my back pocket.
One of the hardest parts of my situation is knowing that the process of getting over him will necessarily, absolutely, guarantee that I _will_ emotionally hurt whoever comes next in line. I'm not being egotistical, I just know myself and what happens when I connect deeply with another person, and what probably will happen if I'm not ready to put myself fully into the relationship. And it's hard not to be afraid to do that. But, either way, I'll have you know, I'm getting the fucking t-shirt.
No more "if only"s, no more "but if"s, no more justifying what he did or I did, no more wishing I would've or he could've or trying to understand him or me or the human heart-mind-soul just a little bit more deeply. I think the thing for me isn't so much regret about the past, but regret over the future. The unanswered questions, never fully trying to be who we should have at least tried to be. Who will I think of when I'm with someone else, when an image of his stories or my emails or our time together emerges, each word dead-bolted into precision-accessible corners of my mind, bleeding colorfully beyond the nicely-delineated borders that I wish I'd drawn. I gave my mind, my time, my spiritual virginity, with such a profundity that it will never, ever, ever, impossibly ever change the fact that I love him and will until the day I die. This isn't something youthful and naive that I'm saying, that I lived, this is something that happens once, sometimes, to some people. Random acts of holy-chaotic crazy-divine forces allow some people to experience it twice.
However.
House said something very vivid in Season 4:
"You'll give up the chance of something real so that you can hold on to hope.
The thing is, hope is for sissies." -- Dr. Gregory House
~
Hope is regret, but in the future. Regret is wishing what was, wasn't. Hope is wishing what will be, won't be what currently is.
You should be quick to point out that hope can be wonderful at times, with our current presidential election as an example--while there are many reasons to be cynical about the future, there are just as many reasons to not be, and one should be content in the reasons to not be cynical. Regret can be equally as wonderful in that it means that you are able to connect with who you've been and who you've become in a grounded, non-lackadaisical way, and it brings responsibility to your future. Both can be wonderful, powerful things.
The point of hope being for sissies, though, is that in many cases it's just about as productive as regret. It prevents living. Really living. And changing. When you wait for whatever it is you want to happen, you end up waiting around for other things in the process, ignoring life in the process, not doing what you could do in the process, waiting your life away. Deriving pleasure from the wait is not as rich of a living-process as deriving pleasure from what you could be doing while you wait. Good things do happen to those who wait, but better things happen to those who grab life by the balls and all the while keep their sights on what they're waiting for. Hope can be overly passive. And, sometimes, if the thing you're waiting for is meant to happen, it will happen--but, again, waiting for it to happen isn't necessarily going to make it happen: actually, it might make chances worse. In my case, it _will_ make it worse because if I try to deal with this mess again and am not strong enough to deal with it, there's no sense in trying to bring change to such a situation when one is not strong enough to deal with it: it would just make things worse. So, I have to put hope behind me and change...or at least put it firmly in my back pocket.
One of the hardest parts of my situation is knowing that the process of getting over him will necessarily, absolutely, guarantee that I _will_ emotionally hurt whoever comes next in line. I'm not being egotistical, I just know myself and what happens when I connect deeply with another person, and what probably will happen if I'm not ready to put myself fully into the relationship. And it's hard not to be afraid to do that. But, either way, I'll have you know, I'm getting the fucking t-shirt.