I Wish I’d Never (a short list)

* I wish I’d never quit piano lessons. This is showing itself in a near-daily battle with the 13-year-old over practicing. She wants to quit, and I don’t want her to have this same regret. So we grumble at each other over the dusty little spinet.
* I wish I’d never said mean things about my mom. I didn’t mean them, but it’s too late for me to tell her that. They weren’t all that different from the things my girls say about me, probably, and most likely they were milder. But I really didn’t mean them. And I’m sorry.
* I wish I’d never bought clothes just because the price was good. I wish I’d been more likely to buy something excellent than to check tags before I decided whether I liked something or not.
* I wish I’d never liked butter.
* I wish I’d never stopped doing those triceps exercises I did when I was 34. I did them every day until I stopped doing them at all, and now look at the state of these arms. Oy.
* I wish I’d never been such a chicken about boys. In particular, about C when I was a freshman in college. He was charming and nice and witty and cute and, by all ordinary signals, interested (at least that one afternoon when I thought I’d better do something other than go out with him when he asked – because [surprise!] he’d never asked again). My fear of being thought a tramp, a brazen hussy, a … oh, let’s be real. My fear of being rejected kept me out of a whole lot of possibly awesome situations.
* I wish I’d never said out loud how I felt about P. Now every time I’m in a room with her, I just get that same icky feeling of being annoyed and disgusted and sad that things are the way they are. If I’d kept that opinion locked safely inside my head, I could pretend I’d never felt annoyed. Or disgusted. Or sad. And then maybe I wouldn’t feel those things at all. Why is it that once it’s said, it’s practically written in stone?
* I wish I’d never stopped the habit of writing every day. It’s hard, these days, to find enough time to write the things I want to say. To carve out the time to enter a story and make things happen, characters feel things, plots go awry. I miss it, not every day, but on the days I try to do it and it’s like using atrophied muscles.
* I wish I’d never gotten into the habit of negative self-talk. How do you unhear your own voice in your head? I wish I’d always been kind to myself. Most days I deserve that, but rarely do I get it.
* I wish I’d never been hesitant to say nice things. I am still hesitant, sometimes – not that I’m shy, but I worry that nice things will be misinterpreted. Sometimes those things happen. But really? To be thought too nice? That might be the right kind of misinterpretation after all.