Regret

Regret is something that everyone experiences, some more than others. Sometimes it is something small like the choice you made in what shoes you wore. Sometimes it is huge, a life altering event that leads to something major like the creation or destruction of life.

Through our choices in our life we develop who we are. We learn from our mistakes, giving us the choice to avoid or repeat them in the future. These experiences makes us who we are as a person. Everyone has regret but in the end it is both the negative and positive experiences that give us our outlook on life and forms our personality.

I have plenty of regret. Would I go back and do any of it over again? No, I don't want to. Even changing just one small thing, one second of an experience could alter my life. The butterfly effect. I love my life and don't want to change my past. Do I wish things were different in some aspects of my life? Of course I do but that is why I'm going to use the future to change it.

Over the past year and a half I made some bad choices that I thought were good for my family at the time. These choices helped make a little clearer the difference between being used and helping someone. My choices broke my daughter's heart after she got to know her dad and then he left. Overall though, I'm glad this happened when she was young because I think it would be harder to accept the fact that for over six months her dad worked to get to know her and gain her trust but in the end he still doesn't want her. It also answered my questions that I had. I always wondered if he would show up later in her life and decide that she is good enough for him to want to be her dad. Him walking out of her life proved to me the same thing I learned when I got divorced. She's too good for him. I refuse to raise her thinking it is okay to run from your responsibilities.

Two great things came out of everything and those two things outweigh any of the loss I had over the past year and a half. First, I learned that I really do want to buy a house. Form now on it won't be just talk, it won't be just a dream that someday might come true. It is a goal that I will be working for. And the greatest thing is my son. I know he was meant to be because just a few weeks before I got pregnant I tried to break up with his dad for that very reason. I wasn't sure if I wanted more, I know he didn't but I wanted to keep my options open. He lied and said things that I believed and I ended up with my son. All the pain and heartbreak I felt when I discovered all his lies is pale in comparison to the love I have for my kids. That is the greatest feeling in the world, love. So when I start to think of the bad things and start feeling regret, I replace it with thoughts of my kids and my love for them.