is one of the most powerful emotions. Thanks to "Wrongologist" Kathryn Schulz for giving me the POV that what hurts so much..., is that I could have done better, I could have been better.
My Golden Age was in Connecticut in the early-to-mid 70's (perhaps some of you didn't realize that history went that far back :). I was in my Twenties, in good shape and chasing tail, except that I was beginning to realize there might be more. My then-immediately-former girlfriend and I had both thrown vitriol all over the relationship, thoroughly and painfully ended it (lesson to self there). The bitterness, the hatred, the warping of subsequent judgement will never heal.
So I started dating Sarah. We became lovers almost immediately, and that was a very positive thing. But what I remember across the decades was that for months, perhaps a year, we tried hard to make the relationship more. We would go places, and attempt to talk, attempt to share. It's as if the yearning for real intimacy was mutual, but we just didn't know what we were doing. We finally drifted apart, nothing traumatic, just a mutual parting of the ways.
And now it's the Decade of the Teens, and I'm doing considerably more than merely evaluating myself harshly. I'm remembering so hard that it hurts. The nights are worst, when I can play what-might-have-been cinema inside myself.
I feel like the unwitting and shallow-headed victim in a slasher movie, running fearfully from Death, down a long corridor that I do not want to be in, a life that I would have much, much otherwise. What I want is to be able to push the RESET button, to rewind and unwind and unbind myself back to 1975.
I don't want more life, just a different life. If I only knew then what I know now, I'd have committed there and then. Perhaps marriage to Sarah wouldn't have lasted; many marriages don't (my current one is 33 & counting). Related decisions would have sent me to a different graduate degree, I wouldn't be where I am now, I wouldn't be _who_ I am now.
When you're young you have little power, and so much freedom, so many decisions unmade, unhearlded. As you age and decide, luck may enhance position, but the decisions left to be made dwindle. All too soon you're out of them, you begin to understand Sally Jupiter (aging superhero from Alan Moore's "Watchmen"):
Oh, Laurie, you're still young.
You don't know.
Things change.
What happened happened 40 years ago.
I'm 67 years old.
Every day, the future
looks a little bit darker.
But the past...
...even the grimy parts of it...
...keep on getting brighter.
And irony of ironies, I seem to have a mental block, and cannot remember Sarah's last name (nor alas that of a one-night stand co-worker). Sarah is Lost in Time, as I suppose we all are. She exists beyond the Arch of Time, perhaps to be cherished only in memory.
I wrote a short story for her a few dark-nights-of-the-soul past, perhaps I'll publish this message-in-a-bottle for Kindle. I'll need some additional stories to make a collection, perhaps there's an opportunity here. Few seem to read my blog; that tells me I need another style as well as another venue.
But NOTHING can bring back the lost opportunity, the chance I squandered, that I might have done better. Regret..., indeed.
ADDENDUM: I've been thinking about this powerful post, and remembering the wisdom of The Beatles, specifically here as cast into the USA theme song to the brief TV series Providence ---
There are places I remember
All my life, though some have changed
Some forever not for better
Some have gone and some remain
All these places had their moments
With lovers and friends I still can recall
Some are dead and some are living
In my life I've loved them all
When they were new, I sometimes wondered if the Beatles would have the staying power of Mozart, or Beethoven. In the fullness of my time, I know now.
