Regret

I am not happy with my life*

Shocker, I know. I also realize I'm hardly alone. (i'm so tired of feeling as if i need to defend myself. i've all these voices in my head--conservative voices i grew up with. ones that say "oh get over it. do you know how blessed you are? do you know how much worse you could have it? suck it up, stupid. you're fine")

I wouldn't count myself as miserable, but the regret! oh god, the regret. So heavy.

I'd do so much over again. So much.

People tell me that I'm fixing things now, and I am. I get that. Yay for me! I know. I know.

Please stop saying those things. Just stop. The last time I heard "good for you!" in response to hearing that I'm back in school needs to be the last. It bothers me. The sentiment, the meaning behind "She's going back to school" and the meaning behind the response just makes my skin crawl.

Good for me, good for me. Yes. Good for me. I fucked up and I'm fixing it. I'm the old lady in the classroom going back to school. It's awful. Do you know how awful it is? I have a love-hate relationship with it. I look at all these kids--kids who were 8-10 years old when I graduated high school, omg--and look at all the extra-curricular shit going on and I just want it all back so, so bad. It's becoming tangibly pathetic, if it hasn't become that already.

I'm not depressed at the moment but these thoughts are patently depressing. I want to cry. I have lost ten years of my life.

But it's amazing to be there. Just amazing. And I so much appreciate the fact that I can even go back. It's become a process of resurrection.

I should leave it at that, no?

It's just in my face, three days a week. I think I'm fine. I can't look that old, after all. I've still got 6 months before I'm 30.

And then the perfectly nice girl who sits next to me makes some comment related to my age.


DILF and I talk about our regrets semi-regularly. They're similar. He speaks of how he wishes he could've grown up with different teachings about life, and he speaks of how he'd ditch the mission. It pissed him off to be two years behind like I am pissed at my ten (well, eight I guess). I talk about what I wish I would've done, even though knowing myself back then and my situation--I may not have. Notwithstanding that, I wish I wish I wish. How I'd do things differently.

And when we talk about these things, we recognize to each other how doing things differently would probably mean we never would've met. But we're okay with this. Is that messed up? We love each other. There are few people in this world, if any at all, who can and will put up with my bullshit and still treat me like gold. Would I be willing to give that up? Yes. I suppose I would be.

He'd be willing too, and that doesn't bother me.

In a perfect world, we'd still have met. We wouldn't have been LDS. We would've just did our thing, encouraged and supported each other until getting married was reasonable. We would've started our careers, built a financial and emotional and whatever base and then had kids. Fuck this shit about getting married ASAP and having kids even quicker despite no job and no money. Fuck it.

School makes me happy. My anxieties blow away there. I feel smart for the first time in years there. I feel respected. I feel like an adult. 

(Newsflash: getting married and having kids does not an adult make)

I might have to take all online classes next semester (logistics--better now than later, won't explain), and I'm just...disappointed. I'm terrified. Funny, given how terrified I was right before school started. Enough to make me sick, sick, sick.

I think being somewhere with people and doing things where I'm away from the dirty dishes, laundry, kids, the midday silence that breeds depressing thoughts--I think it's taking away my anxiety, and I'm hoping now that it'll cure me a bit. I'm not happy here. I know that even more now.

I know these thoughts are hardly constructive, and I'd love nothing more than to just move on. But while I'm learning to be kinder to myself, in this arena I am stubborn. I keep kicking the dead horse. It's just part of my obsessive tendencies we all love so much! I hope it blows over soon. We don't deserve this.



* I know, blasphemy! I'm out of the church, I should be on Cloud-Fucking-Nine. But remember, just as those who are in the church are not by default always happy, those who leave are not always happy. Life, it's crazy that way.

Also, just to clarify: These days I'm mostly happy, but I'm overwhelmed by this one thing right now. So I'm talking about it.