Regret

Other people can move on from it easily.  Others cannot.  It's like a ghost that's constantly haunting you.

Most people who know me may see me as someone who can easily move on from regret.  Yeah, I think I'm one person who knows how to move on from it but not too easily.  In my solitude, my regrets bite me.  They make me stop awhile and then, as I try to go past it, I then temporarily recover from that ugly feeling and just assure myself that it's all gone now and I don't have anything to be bothered about.  I'm one you might call, a Semi-regretter.

Regrets can come from a lot of things.  Regret for a decision, regret for an action, regret for a missed opportunity, regret for a person, regret for a group of persons.

Why regret?  Why wallow on such a bad feeling?  Sometimes it's just the question of the unknown.  Of what could have been if you didn't make an ass of yourself.  That you could have hurt someone, or changed the course of things not for the good but for the worse.  It's the feeling that you did not do good for others or for yourself.  And sometimes, you can be hard on yourself with that.  I am hard on myself with that.  It makes your heart beat a little faster and sweat up a little somewhere in the forehead.

What comes together with regret is guilt.  They're the best of friends.  Regret can't live without guilt.  They were born to be together.

Guilt, I think, is a worse feeling than regret.  While regret takes its toll for a moment, guilt brings its wrath for a long time.  And when these two attack you, the defense mechanisms that are triggered are sometimes much uglier.  I find justifications for my actions, I put blame on everything else around me or sometimes, for lack of anyone to dump it to, I just become apathetic.  The hell I care.

For a moment, for a few days, I then forget about it again.  But, like a tattoo that permanently scars your skin, Mr. Regret and Mrs. Guilt are just there waiting for the next time they can come up again and remind you of what you've done, bug you at how bad a person you once were.  Then the ugly feeling is back again with the hope that it won't stay longer this time.  It's Groundhog Day without the comedy.

How do you get rid of it?  You can't.  It's just there.  You just cope with it and wish that, in your private moment of self-introspection, when your alone in the dead of night, it does not crop up and sting you, again.