regret

If I had to paint regret into a picture, I would capture the face of a long-ago friend surrounded by leaves falling on an autumn afternoon. He had eyes that always seemed to me to twinkle with brightness; on the day from which the memory comes, his whole being seemed to float and shimmer. There was something on his face that afternoon, something in the air between us; there was a moment that felt like a movie-ending moment. It lasted long enough for the thought to pass through my head that he was about to rescue me from another love that had consumed me for years and that was beginning to seem unrequited; he was going to rescue me and replace that with something better, surer, stronger.

In that moment, when I felt that he was about to kiss me, I rewound the tape in my brain to reconsider something he had said as we hiked that morning. "We should get a dog," he'd said, and I'd looked at him strangely, so he'd corrected his use of pronoun. I should have turned to face him just then, with the yellow beech leaves surrounding us standing as witnesses, and told him that since I'd met him when I was 18 I'd been measuring men against him. I should have told him that I had imagined marrying him, had pictured walking through a green field near the ocean and agreeing to move with him to whatever distant place he felt like living next, as he was a wanderer and an explorer, and I knew this country could only hold him put so long.

Though we had been friends for years at the time, this was the first time I had felt a romantic overture from him, and it took me by surprise. It's not that I was uninterested; in fact, I had been quite smitten with him when I first met him, as we built a quick and strong bond, and he, a few years older, seemed magically mature and interesting. But he was seriously committed back then, as good as engaged, and by the time he got cheated on and heart-broken from half-way across the globe, I had concluded that he thought of me only as a little sister and stopped allowing myself to consider him romantically.

Regret comes not from knowing that somehow I let that moment close with no kissing. My regret is knowing that I allowed the dazzling air between us to blow past so many times, over so many years. That I spent hours upon hours, conversation after conversation, pining to him about my other love interest. That though part of me hoped he would draw me away from that situation, I still built a wall around myself, made myself seem to him unavailable—mind and heart already set on someone.

Years later, after he had moved away and while I was visiting one weekend, those who spent time with us together told me he was blatantly in love with me. I wouldn't have believed it if just one had said it; but two said it separately: one of my oldest friends in the world and my mother. The latter asked me how I could be so blind, and I, in shock at the prospect, protested—having fully, after that kiss-less afternoon, come to believe that he thought of me platonically. But when I rewound the tape in my brain that time, I could see it: that the eyes glowed so brightly when near me, that the air became light and joyful when it drew us together.

By then, however, it was too late. When I tried to bring it up, he cut me off. He was already dating her by then—the woman he did one day marry. He got angry when I tried to talk about it. So I let it rest. Instead of making a declaration, I let potential love rest.

I don't believe in wallowing in regret; I find that counterproductive, depressing, self-halting. Instead I try to use it as a guidepost—as a lodestar to lead me down surer paths in the future. Yet every time I come near this particular path, the path of broaching topics that would reshape boundaries, I find myself hesitating. Perhaps that is because he and the other one from that time each skewed my sense of perception—the one seeming to love me but saying it wasn't quite so, the other not seeming to love me like that and yet perhaps all along doing so. They skewed my internal compass, my ability to accurately judge where the line between friendship and romance lies, so that now, many years later, I hang back from it, daydream and speculate rather than declare, inquire, or explore. I may not wallow in my regret, but I still have to not let it wall me in.