Pajiba

I would go back to when I was 7-8 and change the channel from the Lifetime movie I was watching secretly. It was about a girl who got raped by her father/stepfather (of course) and forever changed my relationship with my dad, through no fault of his own. Movies like that should be seen only by the older and already jaded so their views of loving, wonderful men don't get ruined for life.

When i was about 11 my father, who's a single parent (my parents split when i was an infant), finally decided he hated his job and decided to move to another town to get a bachelor's in a subject dear and close to his heart, somehing which he was really interested in and enjoyed doing. When he told me of his decision he asked me if I wanted to come along to this new town or not. I said yes because, while we weren't that close and i had many friends there, I was scared of the unknown, of what would happen, in that irrational way young children have. And while in some ways I think that maybe leaving such a decision up to a child was a bit thoughtless of him I understand that noone couldn't have fully expected how much it would fuck me up. I'd always been a shy kid with some insecuriies, but as mentioned, I had over the years accumulated a solid group of friends (in as much as one can at that age). However, the new town was smaller and the people there way more cookiecutter and even back then I had rather different interest and tastes (for example my favourite band was Pink Floyd; I couldn't enirely undersand it, but I loved it). So anyway I didn't make any friends and lost touch with the old ones and became depressed. So much so that at 14 I had a mini-brakedown and stopped going to school and at one poin didn't talk for a week. So yeah, the road not taken seems appealing right about now. Also sorry about the length, I am nothing if not prolix.

I changed custody from one parent to the other when I was 13. For all the wrong reasons. No major life choices should be made by heavily pressured 13 year olds.

Posted by: Mrcreosote at November 6, 2011 2:46 PM

I've chosen not to pressure my own 13-year-old over this issue, even though I have it on excellent authority that her mother is the worst person in the world. But it's her mother.

I would choose to regret my relationship with her mother, but for how special her children are.

Also I should have stayed in NYC, and been broke there.

~~~

My decision to move to California (from Virginia) at 22 (I'm 28 now) was fraught, rushed, not explained very well, and in many ways it was an act of desperation. I was fleeing a dysfunctional and abusive situation, but most of my nearest and dearest didn't know that at the time (I was ashamed and afraid of making things worse).
My life has been immeasurably enriched by being here (better career path after a lot of trial and error, met a wonderful person that I'm going to marry next spring), and I feel, sometimes, that I'm still alive because of moving. However, I know my relationships with my family and friends in VA have been affected, and that's a tough responsibility to come to terms with. Every time my grandfather says, "I sure wish you lived closer," I feel like a the world's most selfish jerk.

In the immortal words of the Scout from Team Fortress 2:

I regret everything! I regret everything I've ever done!

It's tempting to want to change past decisions. I'd have passed on a teenage neighbor's game of hide-n-seek if I had realized that he was interested in showing his friends how far he could go with a 12 year old. (Not rape, but way too mature for the naive kid that I was.)
As embarassing as my decision was, if I hadn't made it, I wouldn't have been faced with the avenging angel that was my older sister when she found out about it. (The neighbor boy to this day lives in fear.) Up until that point, I hadn't known that I meant that much to my sister. One of my worst decisions led to one of the key turning points in my relationship with one of my (now) best friends.
All of my decisions led to who I am today. (And I'm finally cool with that.)

I'd have been more patient with people. I'd have listened to those who told me to wait and not to move on from relationships if I didn't want to just yet, rather than take the advice of immature dirtbags who (not that I knew this at the time) hop from bed to bed and don't have enough brains to spread across a small cracker. I'd have listened to my own feelings and done what made me happy, rather than attempting to lie to myself - because not only does it hurt me, it hurts other people.

I'd have watched more comedies and fewer tragedies. I'd have hoped more and despaired less. I wouldn't have tortured myself with knowledge of people, and I wouldn't have tortured myself with ignorance of the same. I wouldn't have let loneliness make me stupid.

I'd have visited my great-grandfather in the hospital before he died.

And I'd have shut my brain off, stopped regretting, and lived my life. Easier said than done, of course, but regrets and fear can hold us back more than any actual action we can perform. There really is only tomorrow to make things right, whatever we've done.

I should have left town after my husband went off with another woman. Instead I hung around watching my so-called friends suck up to them and ignore me.

I should have gone to law school or finished the MA that I was working on when we got married.

PS I did finally leave.

I wish that I was that dumb-ass kid and never touch that first cigarette

I’ve experienced every calamity known to man as a child growing up in a dysfunctional family, but somehow it didn’t cause me to carry it into adulthood, I’m a survivor and I’m proud of that fact. I have a great wife and a wonderful kid and we live a great life, I really couldn’t ask for more.

I would have told a grown-up much sooner.

My dad was dying. Everyone knew he was dying. "Don't come," everyone said. "It could be three days, it could be three weeks, and then you'd be stuck out here and what would your kids do?" I didn't go.

I should have gone.

On a somewhat lighter note, the summer before I left home I was -- let us say -- a late bloomer who had no idea how to behave in the presence of a person of the opposite sex. There was this hot, funny, nice guy. I liked him, he liked me, but we were both too shy to act on our attraction. Then in August we both moved to opposite coasts, and I never saw him again. (This was all pre-Facebook. We didn't keep in touch.) I have very few regrets in my life, but one of them is that I wasn't hitting that every day and twice on Sunday until we both left.

I want the eight years I didn't speak to the man who raised me back. He died two years ago at the age of 53. We reconciled three years before he died, but that was barely enough time to reconnect. I did get to say my goodbyes and tell him how much I regretted those years, but it still doesn't seem like enough. He wasn't my biological father, but he was my Daddy. My childhood was really fucked up, parentage wise. I want to go back and tell sixteen year old me that my mother lied and to cherish the men who were willing to claim me and call me their daughter.

I regret being the strongest sperm. I wouldn't have had to suffer the physical and verbal abuse of an alcoholic father and crazy grandmother. And the last 30 years of agoraphobia/panic attacks would never have happened.

Oh, and I would've flossed more.

I would have gone to grad school right after undergrad. Waiting put me in a position to enter the job market at the worst possible time.

Cindy, wow, have you been reading my diary? Because damn, save the alcoholic mother and an actual adoption, that was my EXACT experience with my stepdad. My birth father wasn't in the picture, and my stepdad came in. He wanted to adopt me and I said, "No." (I had some crazy idea that I would lose my identity if I changed my last name. I was eight. What did I know?) And it was never, never brought up again.

It took years for me to call him "Dad," though he clearly was my dad and shaped what I expect from men and what a man should be and how a gentleman should act. And I regret that I didn't tell him sooner what he meant to me growing up. I regret that it took me so long to call him "Dad." I regret hurting his feelings when he wanted to adopt me.

I also regret meeting my college love...sort of. He turned out to be an abusive asshole and I regret the depth of my affection for him because he didn't deserve that much love and that much of me but I don't regret knowing and learning that I can love that deeply. And hurt. That. Fucking. Much.

Oh, one more: A man who fancied me (a man I was super hot for, I might add) asked to go on an all-expenses paid trip to Chicago with him. I declined out of some strange sense of modesty (because I'm stupid). I should've gone.

So yeah, I would change those things.

Regrets I've had a few,
but then again too few to mention...

Regrets are a waste. Learn and move on.

Ok I wish I would of done Melanie Fulton in high school but I thought she was too young. Man was I naive...

@Another Kate

Same thing here too...with a boy. He had no idea I was moving when I told me he liked me. Shoooouuulda done it.

i wish i hadn't ignored girls for most of my childhood and had grown to love them when i was a kid

Oh I forgot, the most important thing I'd put on that list I would give to my college self: "Don't be afraid to make mistakes, because you learn from your mistakes, and if you don't make mistakes, YOU DON'T LEARN!" I didn't figure that out until, well, just this year in fact.

- I wouldn't have pre-emptively said to T "we should see other people" before we both took jobs that were going to keep us apart for nine months

- I would've gone to visit my grandfather for what would've been the last time

The first one led to a lot of heartbreak, but it was a relationship that really should've ended anyway, and it did put me where I am today. But I still think it's a lesson learned to not try to play things cool in an attempt to avoid hurt, and to be emotionally honest

The second was so so stupid, such laziness and obliviousness but it has led me to trying to make sure the people I love know that I love & value them.

And then there are lots of small other things, little decisions that are actually patterns with me, but I'm self-forgiving, accepting of the world, and generally not prone to regret.

I'd like to think I'm too young to have many regrets. But I wish I hadn't spent the last eight years addicted to pornography. So there's that.

The day that I ran into a childhood friend at the bank, and he seemed a little off, I was too busy to catch up... I'd go back, I'd choose to hang out, get some coffee.

He killed himself not long after that, so I'm not going to have another chance.

I wish I hadn't spent my late teens and early twenties fretting over the stigma of being a virgin and wondering "Why haven't I started dating yet, shouldn't I be dating yet, IS THERE SOMETHING WRONG WITH ME?" It wasn't until recently that I realized I'm perfectly fine; I just happen to be asexual.

I would have admitted at month six that we didn't belong together instead of getting pregnant, having an abortion, and forcing a relationship for six more years just to prove we weren't a fling.

We WERE a fling. And I will always regret that I let the love of my life go because I wanted to be faithful to you.

God damn, this thread is breaking me. I'm starting to wish I'd never read this page. We are some damaged goods. Beautiful, yes, but fucking broken.

I wish I never met my ex-boyfriend on my birthday one year. Then I wouldn't have been raped by him, or had to listen to his narcissistic stories about why he was so smart and great. He was pretty good at hiding his true pathetic self until it all unraveled and I had had enough of his bullshit.

Definitely wish I never dated him.

A week before my Dad died suddenly of a heart attack at the age of 52, he happened to come to my city for a work conference. We had lunch and it was a good time. But I wish I had taken off work and spent the whole damn day with him.

Other than that, I wish I had been less careless as a child and teenager. I was always losing things my mom and grandmother gave me, valuable things like jewelry that had been passed down to me. I know my grandfather's dog tags from World War II are somewhere in my old bedroom, but I still have no idea where.

Ah, the age-old idea of taking back one of your life's many mistakes in hindsight. I have mulled over in my head what I myself could take back if I could. But as fun as it might be to fantasize, the fact is that I cannot do it. My mistakes and regrets are just as much a part of the person I am as are my achievements and success. To remove one component could be detrimental. Perhaps taking one of those away could be the keystone that affects my other more favorable experiences. I may even very well cease to be the person I am.

So I imagine if someone were to hand me a magic wand and offered me a chance to alter history, I would have to decline it. Who is to say that some of the bad things I experienced didn't make me into a better person? Perhaps the pain I went through in one event saved my life in another one. Maybe the wisdom learned could be applied to an otherwise unsolvable problem. Maybe the strength gained touched someone else's life for the better. Maybe something I otherwise hate to remember helped me in ways I never realized.

Life, I find, is as much about pain and sorrow as it is pleasure and happiness. It isn't just a collection of experiences, but rather what you become as a result of living through them. And all things considered, I like myself as I am- mistakes and all.

I would have admitted from the get-go that my last boss was abusive and not put up with her shit. I would have fought her everytime she worked to convince me I was too stupid, immature, and weird to be there, to have the career and life I wanted. I would have told her to shut the fuck up every time she told me a million different ways how I was a bad person unworthy of consideration or support. I would have called her out to the team every time she took credit for my work. I would have gone to HR from the beginning.

Carolyn, you are the worst thing that ever happened to me and it's going to take me years to undo the damage. You turned a bright, strong and ambitious girl into a scared and defensive person I don't recognize. But make no mistake, I am fixing the damage. And every time I succeed, every time I stand up for myself, your memory dies a little. One day I will forget you. You will have no lasting impact, you pernicious bitch.

Also, I regret encouraging my brother to drink the water and eat the street food in India. I am immune to pretty much everything so I was fine, but that motherfucker ended up with food poisoning. He such a wild case of the runny shits that it made every diarrhea attack I've ever had seem like your standard issue afternoon deuce. It gave me a huge complex about the power of my butthole I haven't gotten over since. ::sigh:: you win this one, brother. You win this one.

I would not let the pieces of shit that bullied me at school get into my head! I was really good at school and I loved school but when I changed school for my fourth grade I started getting bullied and all that basically changed. I had no support at home (still have none today) and at school so I was all alone (again still am) with my already low self-esteem. So I did not pass that year and then when I did not pass my third year of high school I left school. I tried the next year at another school but did not finished that year and then later I tried night classes and did not finished there either. I caught a depression due to that (started at around 10 years old...yep...the same time the bullying started) and at soon to be 35-years-old I am still having that fucking depression. The way I was/am treated by my family (nothing violent.......ignorance and no affection....i sometimes wished that they would hit me....at least those fucking scars would of healed up) also helped me getting that depression, in fact, I am pretty sure I would of gotten one sooner or later even if I would of never been bulied.

So so so so many things. I regret all that time I spent being self-conscious. I regret smoking that first cigarette.

Above all, I wish I had checked out what that pain in my shoulder was the moment I felt it. The consequences of that were so much larger than anything I could have imagined.

I never would have moved to St. Louis with my parents.

Wouldn't have gone to the college I went to.
Shouldn't have listened to my family's bullshit concerning what I should be doing with my life, and lived it on my terms instead.

Oh well.

Every once in awhile, just to mess with her, I remind ,daughter that if I'd been able to get that girl's button unbuttoned, or if that football game hadn't been rained out, or if I'd said "I love you" to this one chick, or if I'd walked down the street from campus and asked that newspaper to let me come in weekends and answer phones for free just to get my foot in the door, it's highly likely I never would have met Mrs. , and ,daughter wouldn't be here, and hundreds if not thousands of lives would be a little or a lot different. (Butterfly Effect)

I know this may seem trivial compared with some of the tragedies many of you have written about so eloquently, but the truth is the accumulation of dozens of seemingly trivial decisions likely leads you to where you are far more than the Big Ones, and taking a different path at any of those junctures would have meant a different future for you and most everyone around you. You'd probably live in a different place, have a huge number of different family and friends, and many of the ones you have now would never have known you. You wouldn't exist to them.

(I remember we had a thread about this, it was a Tater Barley Banks weekend diversion maybe a year ago?)

Anyway, you start thinking about this kind of thing long enough, it'll make you weird.

So I'd be kind of scared to go back and change anything. Not that I've never made stupid decisions, but I'd be afraid of what the outcome might be if I took a different path, if I went back and "corrected" those dumb decisions. I might be wealthy beyond my wildest dreams, or I might be dead. Roll the dice. Instead, I have what I have, and I rather like it, and if I'm not always happy at least I have a roof over my head and food on the table and a job that pays well for what I do and a wife and a daughter I love and who love me, which makes me content. I maybe could have worked harder and had more ambition, but I'm also lazy, and I like being lazy.

"Gee, Anthropology would be an awesome subject to major in!"

Yeah...I wish I could take that one back.

The only regret I have that I could change and it wouldn't have any negative consequences is that I wish I had told work to eat shit and went to my grandmother's funeral. Come to think of it, I should have told them that when I couldn't get time off to go on that family cruise too.

All the others have consequences that won't work, like not meeting my ex-wife means no daughter and such. I do wish I'd never met my ex-business partner, or at least learned earlier that he was Max Cady nuts. Or that I'd killed his psycho ass. shh.

I regret letting fear and anger have such a big place in my life.

Oops. Max.

*Uriah Creep hops in time machine, refuses to open Comment Diversion thread*

I would have finished college. I wouldn't have blown thru the inheritance my grandfather left me SPECIFICALLY for college by trying to buy friends.

11 years ago, when I first met and fell in love with my now-husband, I wish I would have trusted my instincts and NOT gone back to my live-in boyfriend. I wasted 13 years with him, over which time he became lazier, crazier and more abusive. I would NOT have broken my now-hubby's heart back then, and wouldn't have to face him now, every day, feeling that guilt.

I would have tried to do more to turn my oldest daughter around. I wouldn't have let her go live with her step-dad, and I would have kept her on the Adderal and whatever else it took for her to reach her potential, instead of turning into a broke baby-machine.

I'd actually use that gym membership.

I regreat not going to my best friend's wedding. She lives in San Francisco and I live in Austria, she only gave me 3 weeks notice due to a pregnancy (cutest little boy ever!)and I was broke and couldn't take time off work. I briefly considered taking out a loan, calling in sick and flying over for 24 hours but decided it was silly to spend 48hrs travel time and money I didn't have. Damn you, common sense! I should've been there no matter what.

I regret never really facing up to how flawed my husband is. I love and adore him, buy there's only so much gloss you can spread when one of those flaws rips your heart in two. If I'd been more clear-eyed from the start, maybe I wouldn't have been so thoroughly trounced and he would have had to deal with some of his issues earlier.
Instead of being the grease that makes everything run smoothly, I'd like to have a partner in that. Or better yet, a family that knows how to give and come together. I think I used to have that, but it seems to have shifted to me giving more and more, while everyone's needs grow and their generosity of spirit diminishes.
And I am not sure how to fix that.

Definitely would steer Young Me into a more career-minded lifestyle back in high school. Didn't have any parents or peers that geared me for a real commitment to my education & career as I started college, & as a result I pretty much wasted half of my college education on having fun & delaying adulthood for a few more years. In retrospect, it's probably what I needed after a rather stifled upbringing in a crummy household, however I had an opportunity to study biology at a really good science school & I wound up with a business degree from a rather unremarkable school.

That said, I'm back in school, studying science, going half-time at my office job next year, & applying to Vet School once I finish this (2nd) undergrad degree, which will probably be in either biochemistry or cell biology. So I came around in the end, just took me an extra decade of spinning my wheels in the business world. And in that time I saw a few different parts of the world, met my ladygirl, & found out that I'm an animal-loving vegan, so it wasn't a total loss.

Also would make my parents let Young Me quit swimming & water polo in high school in order to focus on academics & music. Cripes, I'll never get those years back. Being in the water for 2 hours each day sucks. I am not a fish.

@CC:

Genuinely interested in the asexuality thing. Do you have close, intimate relationships w/o the sexual component, or does your asexuality preclude you from such relationships, i.e. dating? I find the subject fascinating & I wonder how intellectual the average asexual might be. I like the idea of a modern man, freed from such trappings of primitive instinct, emboldened with higher brain functions. Sometimes "sex" seems like the province of dumber people.

I regret allowing my ex-husband to take a confident, successful, and kind girl and turn her into a self-conscious, cruel, and generally bitter person.

I regret allowing that psychotic woman that he left me for to make me hate myself and think that I wasn't "pretty enough" or "good enough" for him, much less anyone else.

I regret not confronting my ex-mother in law when I had the chance for ALLOWING the affair to happen in her house, with her blessing. What a fucking cunt. I hope she dies alone and destitute.

Fuck. I need a whisky.

@ Comma (how does one address you, anyway?)
---
I answer to "Hey, shithead! Yeah, you!"

Glad your life seems to be coming together, Max.

I don't like the term "survivor," because it implies there are other options (except for killing yourself). Pretty much everyone has no choice but to go on living through turmoil and tragedy. I haven't had much of those, but if nothing else this thread reminds me that other people have lived through worse than I have -- much worse, in some cases -- and I completely understand there are situations many of us would handle much differently given the chance. I didn't mean to trivialize anyone's regrets. Simply wanted to note that we all most certainly have come to a lot of tiny crossroads in life where, looking back, you can see how if you'd said "yes" instead of "no" or "stop" instead of "go," EVERYTHING would be different, and not just for you. And I think that's fascinating. Fascinating and utterly unknowable.

Unless you're standing on a bridge in a snowstorm and Clarence the Angel falls into the river.

This seems kind of shitty to say, especially since so many of the comments are about regretting not being able to connect with a parent before they died but .... I regret having spent so much of my life trying to make that weak, selfish asshole father of mine love me. He left my mom for another woman (it's wrong but it happens) but he deserted me as well. He repeatedly made me promises that he NEVER kept but I kept giving him chance after chance. It wasn't until I was 36 and had a 3-month old of my own that I realized that he would never really love me. I finally summoned up the courage to tell him to fuck off and it was the third best thing that ever happened to me (#1 - my kid; #2 - my partial hysterectomy). My life is so much easier and less complicated without him in it.

Genuinely interested in the asexuality thing. Do you have close, intimate relationships w/o the sexual component, or does your asexuality preclude you from such relationships, i.e. dating? I find the subject fascinating & I wonder how intellectual the average asexual might be. I like the idea of a modern man, freed from such trappings of primitive instinct, emboldened with higher brain functions. Sometimes "sex" seems like the province of dumber people.

Posted by: the new transported man at November 7, 2011 9:57 AM

(Sorry for the late response, NTM. I hope you see this.)

I can only speak for myself here. The spectrum of asexuality seems to be pretty broad and while I've heard of asexuals who are in romantic, non-sexual relationships or even those who engage in some sexual activity for the benefit of their partner (I've never actually met another asexual, unfortunately), I'm a virgin in every sense of the word. Never been kissed, never been on a date, never had a hand up my shirt, nada. The interest was just never there on my part and that hasn't changed with age. I fully intend to live the rest of my life as a single woman.

Having said that, I'm still capable of feeling attraction to certain people, and even of feeling some arousal. What keeps me firmly in the asexual camp is that I never feel the urge strongly enough to act on that attraction/arousal and seek partnered sex. I may enjoy staring at a handsome man, but it will never occur to me to try to pick him up or ask him out. It's just not an option.

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