Ask me again in the morning

So I said.

The question? "What did you say you regretted?"

I shouldn't be telling you perhaps, so my answer in the morning is going to be something else. It doesn't make sense for you to know, and it doesn't help me any to say it. And since you aren't reading this shite anyhow, it doesn't make any difference to say so now.

I regretted laying myself bare to you, like an apple without its skin, protectionless against the biting invasiveness of oxidization (I'm lyrical about primary school biological tidbits, can't help it).

I regretted the long talks, the sit-downs and the conversations. What good any of it did for me I do not know. What good is anything at all which we shared? Like dust in the wind - uttered and forgotten. I don't forget - retention is my biggest problem - and that means you'll be a part of my life forever (I know I'll never take up the same brain space though).

I regretted hearing what I had to hear from you, not that it was painful to the ears, but that it made me see the multifaceted you. I'd much rather prefer my singular version of you, that simple notion of you. The you I'd rather keep in my mind takes little space: I'd probably describe you in 3 sentences. Now, I've a plethora of descriptions and plenty of images, and the multifacted you sits taking up precious space. I hate it because I know what I know of you is very close to the real you. I regret it because it complicates everything and I hate complications such as this because I won't forget.

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Some of what I never forgot:

1. A heartbreak in 2003. Pivotal moment perhaps, and it meant that life changed. Some people will tell you there are certain points in life where you come to a fork in the road and went down one path or the other, thinking that things might have been different down the other way. This was one of those moments where I realised that the 5 years prior to that had been something akin to a series of choices down the wrong side of the fork. This was one of those moments where I would have continued down the wrong side if not for that nail-in-the-coffin heartbreak. A call to say: no more forks, you've reached the dead end.

And what happens at the dead end? Bang your head on the wall and let the physical pain obliterate the senseless wrenching of your heart. Gawd that hurt...

2. A conversation in 2005. Whys. Why nots. Politics. Goals. Religion. Life. Past. Present. Future. Kids. Marriage. Girlfriend. Career. Studies. Perhaps. Perhaps not. Food. Boss. Friend? The importance of being earnest. Network, network, network. In one ear. Out another. Black box. Feelings. Prayer. Farewell.

Perhaps. Perhaps not. Never a question I asked right. Never an answer I got in return.

3. Crying in 2000. I thought that there was a death, a passing. I thought I don't have a chance to say goodbye, not that I've ever said anything meaningful before to you. I thought that you will never get sick the way you did - I never thought that, instead of dying, that you will die slowly instead, each day at a time. I thought that all you wanted to was to live more, but you wasted instead, little by little, letting life slip away.

I know that the worst thing was losing your dignity, your once proud bearing and unflagging criticism of your children. I know this well for I live with one of them, he who bears your legacy so proudly that if and when you do leave, you leave us with a part of yourself more than ever. Unsuspectingly, he will be like you, and you will be here.

4. A kiss in 2004. Tentative. Reserved and almost shy. Yet, somehow, there was a hint of a dare. A challenge - kiss me, you know you want to. Approached slowly, like it was the hardest thing to do in the world. When it changes everything in a relationship, you want to be safe rather than sorry. Perhaps what marked the event was the place. Perhaps what marked the place was the time. And unlike life and its set of choices, there was nothing loaded about this one.

So I plunged right in.