Single Again… Regrets and Loss

By Kenneth Stepp

 

Since launching my journey into singledom. I have had many words that have more meaning to me than they did when I was part of an intact family, I wrote about “Gone”, not long ago. Today, it’s regret. I have so many over the past few years, it’s hard to imagine how many really, I wish I’d handled the divorce differently, I wish I had not put my heart in such a vulnerable place where it got hurt so badly when I became single, I wish I had not moved so far from my youngest children. They have their own lives now, but I miss them so much. Today I am missing someone I had much stronger feelings for than I could have imagined. We were friends, well sort of. I honestly could never figure out what we were, but whatever it was, there is a pretty deep hole where it use to be. These losses add up to us singles. Someone is there one day, they are gone the next. Some leave very little footprints, some leave holes. I have two holes in the emotional network inside me. Just two over a three year plus period, many would say that is not bad at all, but they aren’t missing someone as special as my friend.

 

“Missing someone, they say, is self-centered.

I self-center you more than ever.”

― Saša Stanišić

 

I need to process a little to understand how missing someone is self centered, although I can see where it might be. After all, it is my feelings. So, maybe this guy is right. Times like this bring back only good memories. You miss the good stuff, I think I even miss the bad. Sarcasm, critiquing me, and “complete honesty”. Something my friend and I could never agree on at all. Not being honest. But what to do with the honesty? I believe you can be honest and only talk about the good in someone. She believed if you see something bad in someone you sneak up behind them, hit them over the head with a baseball bat and as they are waking up, she would point out the thing that made them hurt, I like to point out what’s good in people. I will miss that part of her charm as well. It’s funny to me what we miss about those we’ve lost. I can think of things that drove me nuts, but know I will miss those too. Relationships are so difficult and confusing, especially the ones we never knew we had. Till they are gone of course. Reflection really is a tricky teacher. I am in a cloud of absence.

 

“You can decorate absence however you want- but your still gonna feel what’s missing.”

― Siobhan Vivian

 

Words cannot be unsaid, actions cannot be undone. A day came and a day went, nothing can be done about it, or should be. I’m guessing my readers have regrets. Most of them anyway. I would love to hear what some are, I have so many. I believe my new regret wasn’t as invested as I was in our friendship,  we were just friends-ish. Friends these days seem disposable, they never have been to me, that’s why I am feeling the loss. I lost someone who mattered more to me than I knew, I really hate that. It’s odd how I have heard this story from so many before but didn’t live it till now. Who do you miss? What is your regret?

 

My hope is that one day, society will begin to value others, more like when I was a kid. It seemed that people mattered more than they do now. I look around and I see a broken generation. Respect, caring, honesty, and even manners, these things are in shorter supply than they use to be. In an age where, if someone has an opinion different from yours, you can click a block button, be better than that. I hope one day things change. Whether they do or they don’t, be better than that.

 

“The absence of a message sometimes is a presence of one.”

― Hasse Jerner