Sunday March 21st 2010
Day #2
Theme for the day ...
“Should of , would of , could of … IF ONLY"
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Karma Free Writing will be offering 27 Days of Karma Free Writing Prompts starting on the 1st day of Spring. These writing prompts are designed to stimulate the creative process for writing your personal story - and beyond.
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About Me
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ReplyDeleteThe surprise of If Only....
ReplyDelete« But really.... I mean really what do I know? Do I have any idea of the universe's general plan for us? Not even a tiny little guess... The only thing I know is that I know nothing and that it is amazing the things I don't know that I don't know... But there's one thing I'm quite sure : Today I am exactly where I have to be and I feel grateful for that.»
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ReplyDeleteIf only was going to kill me if I didn't stop thinking about it.
ReplyDeleteI should have had more confidence and asked for more help.
I was determined to do everything on my own, determined to make my own way. I didn't need anyone. And yet, I needed everyone.
Aubepine-perfectly said.
ReplyDeleteYES, "if only" is killer... There is nothing I dread more then the feeling of regret or the thought of "IF ONLY". I like to think that things turned out as they should have and happened in the time and order they were meant to occur. But if ever I feel that I have made wrong decisions in my life I remember something a close friend once told me, "it's always the bad decisions that make the best stories."
ReplyDeleteYes! Your friend is correct about the best stories part... I just did today's writing prompt and wrote an entire page in minutes... About my regrets of not marrying a good friend who died due to an overdose of prescription drugs. Wow, this stuff works! :) Painful at first, but I'm loving my daily intense 12 minute writing sessions. It's the fastest therapy. :)
ReplyDelete..Ok, I decided to share my ramblings from today's exercise. I have a feeling it would otherwise add to my "should haves" list.. :)
ReplyDeleteMy biggest should have, could have, would have…..Ever.
I should have married Billy … or moved in with him… Then he would be alive today. If I could have been there for him in California he wouldn’t be dead. If only he hadn’t hidden his prescription drug addiction from me. Or if only I hadn’t enrolled in the MBA program and left town. These are would have could have should haves that I sometimes think about. I think about Billy everyday of my life. I miss him like crazy especially during holidays and his Birthday.
It’s not that I even regret not marrying him, as my worst should haves. I do feel guilty for not being there for him during the difficult times. The tough love concept, letting people hit rock bottom is total agony for me. Ironically, I feel that I’m going through that again with another love interest, a friend I have known for years. I shouldn’t have left town, and moved coasts due to not being able to stand by and be an audience, but I am glad I did too. In that sense I realize that I’m being hard on myself. I know I’ve been told that I’m an awesome nurturer but I do it too much too! Then it’s taken for granted. With Billy I know that he didn’t take me for granted. He put my interests above his…always. That hurts the most, because the world really is lesser for his being gone. I miss the friendship, and I wish he were still alive everyday of my life. I am starting to cry just writing this. A good friend advised that I should be grateful for the tears, because it’s an honor to have loved someone so much and…. To have been be loved back!
My father taught me and I quote: “never talk too much about shoulda woulda coulda… just go for it!” He knew that regret is not worthwhile. It stagnates us from doing anything. If we’re too afraid to make mistakes, then we’ll never learn, and even worse.. Never experience life to the fullest.
Billy’s death was a landmark in my life… and one of the last should haves, is that I want to visit his grave. I missed his funeral and I think I should have gone sometimes. However, I couldn’t for health reasons. I know he would have understood, but I do think a lot sometimes about closure. A dear friend, who suffered a similar loss, shared this piece of advice. “You will never be over it. You will miss him for the rest of your life. That’s OK.”
So, I guess his death was the biggest confirmation of a life lesson. Namely, that it’s amazing that I took a chance to date someone who had so many differences, in age, religion and later zip codes… Because it was a conversation that got interrupted but I’ll remember forever.
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ReplyDeleteJoanna, so much of the first section could have been transposed from my own mind (is there just one mind?). And, "I should have decided about Judaism by now." Hmmmm!
ReplyDeleteYour last three lines strike me as very beautiful. "...and everywhere else" keeps pulling me back as if to a magnet.
If only the man sitting in one of the leather chairs behind me at Peets (who, you might be interested to know, was named after Thomas Aquinas) wouldn't talk as if everyone in the place needed to hear him. I'm thinking....alcohol. And it's only mid-afternoon on a Sunday no less. If only he'd stop walking around as if he was the maitre de, greeting all his old supposed friends. If only he hadn't just come back to the chair behind me. And if only his father hadn't just bought a Chevy Cobra which (get this!) costs about $200,000 now.
ReplyDeleteIf only I wasn't compelled to listen, to pay attention to everything that goes on around me. As if that was my life and not the other, more self-condemning things I could be wishing were different instead.
Like: If only I'd been able to let Matt love me. If only I'd had that baby who would be 31 now and who I'm sure would have been a boy. If only. If only. If only I'd been able to stick with one profession, But then I would have missed all the others -- and would I be writing now?
If only I'd stayed with Matt. If only Daddy hadn't died. If only I'd sold all those stocks I'd made a killing on before they reverted, as I now know stocks tend to do, to their lows.
If only I'd gone right on to Kings Road Café to pick up my pound of coffee instead of stopping here at Peets, who knows what would have happened on the way there or who I'd be listening to now? Certainly not the guy behind me who aha! seems to have disintegrated into the sound waves of his own self-importance.
And would my life really be better if my walls were painted the apricot and lavender and cream that Mary's are? If my own apartment with its white walls didn't have stuff from all the eras of my life taking up every available surface -- Aunt Doris's ebony nude with the beads around her neck; Mom's plastic flower arrangement in the tea cup from wartime Japan; my dead T'ai Chi teacher's wooden mushroom candlesticks; my adorable new wool burro from Mexico; to name just a few. If only they weren't taking up every surface, unlike Mary's little house where not one sweet piece of Mexican folk art or photograph of one of her four grandchildren is out of place and the eye is encouraged to find one place after another to stop and rest.
If only I were a fish, I would have been eaten by now and would have fed so many others. My purpose would have been fulfilled. If only I were a cloud, I could have an aerial view of the earth below me and nice peek at the space above, I could watch the other clouds around me, and feel the wind whispering behind. If only I were this, that and the other thing, I could revel in my regret, celebrate my what if’s, pontificate my past. But this is no luxury; this all serves me very little.
ReplyDeleteSome have posed the idea that if we even open our minds to the possibility of a different thought or decision, that thought or decision begins to play out…that parallel life begins and travels it’s own path. We may at any given time have over 3 million parallel lives happening at once. If that is so, why do most of mine lead to lurid sex acts? Or an ol’ fashioned gunfight outside a saloon? Why do most of my parallel lives find me in the end all be all battle of the robots? And why do I always win? Yes, I will always win! When will the robots learn? When will my subconscious learn, that my will is too strong for me not to fail?
If I were a hammer I’d hammer in the morning, I’d hammer in the wheat fields all over some ham. I’d hammer in snow-time, I’d hammer in the bathhouse, I’d hammer in the toes and the glow sticks, my hamsters and my possums, all over this ham.
What happened yesterday was this, and this I cannot change, so I can’t live in the remorse or disappointment of it. If it were a victorious day, I wouldn’t be able to live in the celebration of it, but maybe I would try. That is something I like to do actually. I like to hang onto my hallowed occasions; those are some of the things I like to fill my mind with in my day. But then they fly away, those feelings of accomplishment, of pride, of ego being fulfilled and then new feelings come in, some of desire, some of fear, some of contentment in just this moment right now.
Re skull swinger piece above: this was a really interesting piece with a unique voice and a free spirit that i really enjoyed. i esp liked: that parallel life begins and travels it’s own path. We may at any given time have over 3 million parallel lives happening at once...also loved entire last paragraph.
ReplyDeleteIf only I had known that being a minister would make me hate the church I don't think I'd be a minister.
ReplyDeleteI don't know though. How do you know?
If only.
If only is useless. I don't know how to live in if only. If only can only be answered backwards.
If only is if only is if only.
If only is the place where nothing lives because if only never happens.
If only is not elusive. Is only is a vacuum. If only knows no limits. Nor does it know beginnings.
If only I'd not eaten those onion rings at 4 in the morning I'd now not have onion breath.
If only I'd walked, run, done yoga this morning I might have burned off those onion rings.
But if I'd done those things I'd not had coffee with Mark and learned of the cartoonist from the Village Voice and heard Nico's announcement of "Mom, Mark...a giant sale at Ross Dress For Less and they are giving away Robert Rauschebergs!!!" as a way to get us out of the house.
If onlies lead us no where.
I can't even feel sorry for myself with if onlies.
I do envy, a bit, those who can live in the world of if only. It seems their lives are tidier. They know that "if only" this had happened that would have happened.
I watched my mother live in the bear trap of if onlies. She never had the courage to graw off her paw and move on.
She remains tethered to her if onlies. She might get rid of one, but then she finds another.
A certain security of place, time expectation and lethargy lives in if only.
How she can manage this burden is beyond me.
Can it be more trouble to move on than to live in if only? Can it be that there is safety in the putrid stench of captivity that a world of if only supplies?
Perhaps one grows accustomed to the smell and never changing scenery and dull thump of one's own heartbeat.
skullswinger..I LOVE YOUR POST!!! it is deep, meaningful and fucking funny!!!!
ReplyDeleteBy now I thought that I would have developed sustainabe businesses in the rawfood industry. A few years ago, I was on fire and opportunities abound. I was one of the first in the state of Tx to be inspired to start selling rawfood meals and was set on spending some time in LA to absorb the craft and develop the contacts to become a strong player in the industry.
ReplyDeleteWhat has happened instead has been 5 juicy years of difficult lessons and personal let downs. I have started a few projects and also self defeated these projects.
Turns out there has been much turbulence inside me. Chaos that has been deeply buried and operating on the unconscious level. I know I'm still young,18 months from 30 years. Yet, @ age 24 I truly thought I would be settled and across the nation with potent recipes of alchemical chocolate bars by now.
Instead, I've crushed some relationships. I've let myself down many times, let others down many times. I've broken hearts, had my heart broken and gone thru nearly every business downfall possible. I've undersold myself and de-valued myself.
I do see that I'm now ready to fly. I know where to go, where to steer clear from. How to present myself in relationship and how tocreate clear clean contracts with all relations.
I really wanted to be further along today in my "tonal" reality or physical reality. What has happened instead is that I've matured emotionally and spiritually. My "Naqual" reality is much more matured.
And, if I look at today , I have all the opportunities still ahead that were always there. The ones that are dependent on me doing the work and showing up at least.