Regret

(This is a homework assignment from my therapist. She asked me to write a poem about regret.)

I never took an African drumming class.  I would have liked to have been in Samba Ja, this badass drumming group that ended all the parades in Eugene. 

I didn’t listen to my intuition when I was 13 and swooned over Nat Geo articles, wishing I could do that for a living.  Now I’m staring down 60, thinking I can become a photojournalist.  I could have started so many years earlier. 

I haven’t written consistently since I was a teenager.  I still struggle with it, even now that I’m a Creative Writing major. 

I didn’t leave my religion the cult I was in until I was in my mid-30’s – physically.  Mentally, it still controls me far too much.  I got baptized at 16 – one of the biggest regrets of my life.  My family is still in the cult.  And I’m not fighting to get them the fuck out.  I wasted so much time trying to “be perfect as your heavenly father is perfect.”  I never got the whole God thing, never felt any connection – but I’m not sure I regret that. 

I let my friendship with Pam fall apart over religion the cult.  There isn’t a day that passes that I don’t think about her.  There isn’t a day that passes that I think about writing or calling her, but I know she wouldn’t respond, and if she did, it would be caustic.  Rightfully so. 

I regret pretty much everything I ever posted on Facebook and Twitter. 

I regret not seeing Luther Vandross, Prince, or George Michael in concert.  (Michael Jackson too, but, you know).  I didn’t see my celebrity crush since 1995, Chris Noth, in any of the stage plays he was in, or visit his club, The Cutting Room.

I married my best friend, David, but I wasn’t in love with him.  I was not a good wife.  And I regret that because he deserved so much better.  After we divorced, I dated three more David’s.  Thanks to them, I can say “#MeToo.”  

I regret not meeting Ralph sooner and that we couldn’t have children. 

I wasn’t able to see my father, grandfather, and favorite aunt – I was her namesake – before they died.  My mother was delirious when she died – she didn’t even recognize me.  These are wounds which will never heal. 

I never told my mother and grandmother to knock it off when they had arguments.  I wish I had stood up for myself and shouted, “Shut up, both of you!”

I didn’t do more with interpreting.

I didn’t do more with theater.

I didn’t do more with interpreting for theater. 

I missed my high school prom.

I didn’t vote for the first time until 2000.  I was 39.  I went to my first political protest in 2005.  I regret becoming politically active so late in life.

I never ran a marathon, in London, or Tromsø. And now, I can’t run.  I don’t regret hip replacement surgery.  But the grief I feel, never having reached that goal . . . When I’m out driving, I see people running so effortlessly, and I cry.   

I had such a solid Yoga practice, and I let it go.  I doubt I can get it back. 

My mother was right – she said I would be sorry that I didn’t keep up with my piano lessons.

I never joined a choir.  I think I would have enjoyed that. 

I never took ballroom dance lessons.

I wasn’t careful with the money I inherited.  I feel like I let my mother down. 

We lost all of our belongings in a fire in the RV we drove cross-country when we moved from New Jersey to Oregon.  I lost all of my family photos, and I have a few items of jewelry my mother and grandmother gave me. 

I regret being too frightened to really live.  

I regret being too scared to die.