It's my (half) birthday and I'll cry if I want to
Reflecting on regrets and specifically mine.
As long as I can remember, I’ve been particular about my birthday. To me, it’s less important that I do something spectacular and more important that I avoid any undesirable task that day. It’s partially because I’m bratty but also because I remember my birthdays so vividly. Having a disastrous birthday ensures I will revisit it once annually seemingly forever.
I come from a family of optimists. Many reflective conversations we have end with the fact that they believe most things happen for a reason, and that most life events have purpose. To express regret or longing for another scenario could be met with an emphasis that the struggle endured was perhaps part-of-it all along.
Despite my efforts, I do not live without regrets. I try not to dwell on them too much, but as we approach my half birthday (April 19th!), it might be the perfect time to indulge in some negativity. As though a happy birthday has been flipped on its head. What follows is an inexhaustive list of what I’d consider avoidable missteps.
I wasted my most agreeable years on people solidly in my past
In theory, I can accept that relationships (romantic and not!) that end still have value. The lessons we learn about others and ourselves are worth the pain in finality. But in practice, I often struggle to focus on those lessons and release the resentment with which I find myself. Sometimes I experience a full-body cringe when I remember how much kindness, tolerance, and patience I seemingly “used up” on people that are no longer in my life. To envision these traits as finite resources I know is silly, but here we are.
I spent a lot of time completing basic tasks for fellow adults, allowing them to utilize my person as a trial-and-error space for growth, and forcing myself to keep a smile on my face the entire time. For the sake of my self-worth, it was vital I be the most agreeable partner one could imagine (aka the cool girlfriend). I once spent hours in a hideously dirty kitchen, in a house without air conditioning in July, making an ice cream cake for my boyfriend’s friend’s birthday so they would like me. My boyfriend or any of his friends. So many hours have passed, even ones I’ve spent more wastefully, but I’m still horrified by the memory. By now when anything that resembles this presents itself, I am less patient and more likely to push back – even to those that I love and that treat me better.
I literally wasted so much time
When I was a freshman in college, I was unemployed and not even attending all my classes. Facebook was new, and I had literally never felt a rush like developing a crush on someone and finding their Facebook page. A boy with big eyes and curly hair talked to me in psychology class? If I could spot his name on any of his belongings out of the corner of my eye, I could find his page. That could occupy half a DAY. Then I would go to the library and text my friends.
Was I struggling with a deeper attention deficit issue? I think so. Was I eighteen years old and SLOWLY envisioning what I wanted to “do” with my life?? Probably that, too. But sometimes when I’m very busy, I think about those years. Today I could never find nine hours to look at Facebook or be as unproductive as I was.
That almost romanticizes my wasted time. It has to be said I had like. No stability or money. Anyway, I long for that time back.
I threw my diaries in the trash
Months before I was dedicating several hours a day to reading every post on my psychology crush’s Facebook page, I moved out of my parents’ house. Because I lived in the same house from age five till eighteen, I had no concept of what it was like to move. To relocate from a house with ample storage for everything I’d accumulated over more than a decade to a small room I would share with a stranger, I wasn’t considering nostalgia in the slightest. I left behind all the folded notes I’d saved from friends in shoe boxes in my closet, in addition to all my scribbled thoughts in the diaries I kept all through my school years. Only once I returned home for break did I realize these boxes were vulnerable there. To the nosy or even just bored whims of those that still lived at the house.
So, when I prepared to return to college after Christmas break, I emptied the contents of these boxes full of priceless thoughts and memories into the trash. I have an image in my head of the moment I dumped them. Maybe I created it as a placeholder now that I’m obsessed with this mistake, or maybe there was part of me that knew the minute I did it that it was an error. Either way, the evidence of my precious adolescent memories and secrets was destroyed in pursuit of assured privacy. It wasn’t worth it.
I’ve been so easily embarrassed
I’ve done plenty of legitimately embarrassing things. I’ve lied about weird things and been caught, I am always spilling something when I’m gesturing, I chipped my teeth on the bottom of a swimming pool and a lot of people saw my tooth nerve, I’ve tripped in front of crushes, I’ve fallen down in front of coworkers (playing KICKBALL no LESS). I know these things come with growing up/being a person, but the memories of things I didn’t do and things I didn’t express because I was too embarrassed haunt me!
When I was a teenager, I planned to travel to visit my aunt in Seattle, Washington to lightly assist in babysitting duties for her newborn. I’m confident she extended this invite to be nice and form connection, but I took the task very seriously. She asked me a few things in an email prior so she could make my stay more comfortable, including what cereal I liked to eat in the morning. I told her plain Cheerios because it felt like the most mature selection. When I visited her, I choked through those plain Cheerios the entire time, regretting my deception.
Though this example is mundane, it is one of the earliest times I can remember trying to hide my authentic interests and desires out of embarrassment. To have “childish” tastes, to have aspirations, to TRY at all – somehow it all swirled together, and it was easier to endure squishing it down than to risk an unfavorable response. To avoid mocking, rejection, and pity, I worked overtime and lost out on so much.
Now I work hard to push against these unhelpful self-preserving ways, maybe asking for things too loudly. Even publishing these newsletters feels like important practice.
There are other things I regret but they’re too sad for PRINT today
I’m sure someone reading this thinks, if these are the things you wish you could change, you’re lucky. And that’s true! But I’m reflecting on regret. Is it disrespectful to wish I’d done something so differently or acknowledge mistakes? Does it diminish completely the relationships I’ve cultivated during the times I wish I could erase?? I don’t think so. Truthfully, I think there could have been just as favorable outcomes for me if I had pivoted. Is my romantic relationship the only one that could have been successful and harmonious? Is my child the only child that I could have loved this intensely? Are my friends the only ones that could make me feel joyful and challenged and cared for? We literally won’t know, because this is the path I’m on and save for a Back to the Future experience, I can’t exist twice. And I’m not saying any of this to be ungrateful or imply everyone I love is replaceable.
Maybe a conversation about regret drifts too quickly into a conversation about higher powers and purpose. How can one believe that everything happens for a reason when truly heinous things occur? But I also don’t want to take away from anyone that takes comfort in the idea that their struggles are vital to the next step in their life’s path. Personally, I’m comforted by the idea that options are present and real. And to me that includes regrets and truly useless occurrences.
Ultimately, I’m grateful, to whom it may concern, for the state of things in my life. It’s easy to philosophize about life’s journey when you’ve landed somewhere relatively soft and safe, and I have. But if you also look back and think you could have managed without characteristics or characters, I really hear you. Happy half birthday to me.
I’m so glad I’m not the only one who LOVES their half birthday, so happy half bday to you! Are you a themed birthday party kind of gal?
I also have a hard time forgiving & forgetting some of my early 20’s life choices and still wake up in the middle of the night being overwhelming embarrassed for something small I did 10 years ago. It does, however, make me more grateful for being the person I am now!
As being a newer friend, I love learning about Young Alyssa (can I just say the flip phone picture was GOLD!) I relate to this so much!