On Regret

Many people regret having missed an opportunity or let a loving relationship slip through their fingers.  I regret the sudden and irrational destruction of the journals I kept between the ages of nine and twenty-three.  

There were over thirty notebooks of all kinds, ranging from marbled composition books I’d purchased at the 99 Cent Store to luxurious, embossed leather journals I’d received as gifts, and they contained thousands of handwritten pages, chronicling everything from letters to an imaginary childhood friend, to the awe and trepidation I experienced upon graduating from college and moving to New York City.  These journals contained a coming-of-age story that could only be told by one person, in only one way, and they were perfect, because they were perfectly ME.  Why, then, did I unceremoniously dump them into a garbage bin one day? 

I wish I had some cogent, relatable answer.  The truth is despicably banal: in a manic fit of cleaning most likely induced by the reading of a self-help book  - and I am not, by any means, a neat freak – I decided that getting rid of my old journals would solve all of my problems.  Never mind the piles of clothes and knick-knacks all over the place; I chose to throw out nearly fifteen years’ worth of original written material, a capsule of my youth, in order to make room for – what? More cheap jeans? 

Perhaps that box of journals met its unfortunate end because it presented itself as one large item I could grab and quickly get rid of; unlike the ubiquitous piles of clothing that required sorting and a few trips to the Salvation Army, it was something I could easily tackle.  The sick thing is, the horror and senselessness of what I had done didn’t hit me until months later, long after the two square feet of closet space I had freed up had been stuffed with ill-fitting McFashion.  To say I wanted to kick myself would be an understatement.  I felt like I had a hole in my heart.  My one priceless, irreplaceable possession, and I had chucked it like a greasy sandwich wrapper, without a second thought.  As more time passed, my regret was amplified by the fact that no one with whom I shared my story was able to offer any words of comfort.  Instead, they all agreed that what I’d done was idiotic. 

I wish I could end this on a positive note of redemption, but the truth is, I’m still very upset and I deeply regret having discarded those journals.  After my beloved grandmother died last year, I was plagued with thoughts of how many of her stories, jokes and bits of wisdom I had recorded in those journals and how desperately I wished I were able to re-read them.  Whether or not the journals actually do contain these sentimental family memories, I cannot now recall.  But because I no longer have them, they necessarily contain everything precious and fleeting about my youth, and they are irretrievably lost.  Left in their place is a messy closet and a heart heavy with regret.