If It All Falls Down

My life has (thus far) been fantastic and wonderful in every way. But, like anyone, I do have many regrets.

Today is a beautiful day in Paris. It is cloudy and cold... But I have a big bed. And I am in Paris.

Trivial as they are, my regrets seem to haunt me often. Its odd how the further away I am, the easier it is to see things clearly. It is more simple, now, to really evaluate what needs evaluating and forget what needs to be forgotten.

As I said before, when you are young- everything seems so big. Especially because I tend to overanalyze pretty much everything.

I wish I had spent my 18th birthday dinner with my father. I wish I had been with my mother on New Years Eve this year. I should have let more things go with my brother when I was younger.

When I was 18, I spent a six days in bed in an oversized flannel shirt, not eating or sleeping. Last year I spent three days and nights on Brittanys horribly uncomfortable couch in literally the exact same position. It is hard, when you are feeling that way, to imagine getting back to... well...life. The best part though? I did. And now I can laugh at how silly and overdramatic I was being in both situations. I'm pretty sure when I was 18, my dad was sick of having me around all the time. And last year I know Brittany was tired of coming back from classes, seeing me STILL lying on her couch with nothing really to say except the standard "coulda, woulda, shoulda's" that tend to highlight regrets.

When I was 18, I was going back to college- and I had to get ready- last year, I had finals, and I had to take them. No matter what happens to you, life continues to go on around you. One day, you have to wake up and get out of bed.

Whenever I am going to make an important phone call, I write out something to say ahead of time, because it's hard for me to organize my thoughts in the heat of the moment, especially when I know I've done something wrong. In fact, usually the more I care about something, the more staggered my speech is and the less I can find to say. I had to make one of these such phone calls in the end of January this past year, and at the time, it seemed so big.Though I realize where I err'd to this day, it's something- now- that I (and likely all sides of the situation) can laugh at. I like to think that I learned a lot from that situation (despite some glaring evidence to the contrary).

Sometimes though, it takes a long time to learn the same lesson, and you can't beat yourself up over that.

There are times when I should've made my friends a higher priority- and they know that. There are times when I spent too long lamenting over things that I should have let go immediately. I should have given second chances in cases where I didn't- and I shouldn't have, in many cases where I did.

When I was dating Bryan and we planned on breaking up at the start of my sophomore year of college, he left me with a gift- a crimson glass heart with a line from my favorite book engraved on it. It was perfect, really, because I spent our relationship thinking that he didn't really pay attention to the little things i said. I had given up on him long before that relationship ended, but that heart was the perfect way to end everything- because it showed how much he had cared, and how much he did pay attention- even though it was over, it was nice to know.

I would love if everything ended that way, with a glass heart serving as a cheerful reminder of good times that were over. Over not in a bad way where you are unsure of what will happen next…but over in the definite, positive way that never really happens in real life. But that's just not the way it works. That is another regret of mine.

There are things that I would do differently. But as a very wise Carrie Brandshaw once said, we all have to let go of the coulda, woulda, shoulda, buckle up, and just keep going.