I can I know

The sharp stab of better choices not made. The what ifs and the could-have-beens. The second guessing. The anxiety. The absolute regret. It’s full of pain. It hurts more than I’d like to admit.

A decision made impulsively. Too quickly. In hindsight, incorrectly? If only I could go back in time. Choose different. Choose better.

And I mean this in reference to the mundanest of things. The most trivial of decisions. Sometimes, some bigger ones too. But mostly, just everything.

Trying a new dish and not liking it as much as what I would normally order. Getting a pedicure and wishing I’d chosen a different color. Agonizing for far too long over the most “correct” day to have my laundry done. Bringing something useless to Bali with me and six months later still obsessing about how I should have left it back in New York.

Some of these choices are longer lasting than others. Some are more easily forgettable, some less so. The majority of decisions I wrestle with daily are really and truly, objectively, not that ultimately important.

I know this. They hurt nonetheless.

I bought new glasses the other day. I was really excited about it. I tried on a few frames and made my choice.

I went to pick them up yesterday, and I hated them. They looked all wrong on my face. It was too late.

Now, once again, I have glasses I do not like. This isn’t the first time this happened. I try to convince myself they aren’t so bad. That I don’t care so much. That I in fact love them.

I have such a hard time accepting the fact that I am disappointed in my choice.

Why does something like that hurt me so much? Why must I replay the scenario over and over and over again in my head, each time having myself make a different choice, a better choice? Why am I so upset by this?

I think in part it’s because the last two times I’ve purchased glasses, back in the US, I spent way too much money on frames I didn’t truly love, as the ones I did like were out of my budget at those times. Now, here in Bali, I got to choose frames for a fraction of New York prices, and I was so excited to get something I really liked, and still, yet again, I’ve come away disappointed.

So it hurts. It feels like a personal failure this time. I could have done so much better. I had the chance, and I messed it up.

The sting of regret is sharp. I feel it in my chest. Painful. Denial. Refusal.

It is disproportionate to the thing that is causing it.

I don’t know why my brain is the way that it is, but I do know it well enough by now to know that it simply is. And I can get on board with the way that I work, or I can spend my lifetime fighting myself.

For me, getting on board means letting myself feel shitty about whatever it is, allowing the admittance of a “mistake”, and allowing time to pass. Riding the wave of my sadness and regret, having compassion for the way I’m feeling about this regardless of its ultimate (non) importance in life, and just being. It’s painful, and it sucks, and it’ll pass.

I’ll live with my crappy glasses and next time, I’ll try again, hopefully with more success, to choose a pair I truly like.

Of course, I completely and fully understand that choosing a new pair of glasses and then not liking them is not the world’s biggest problem right now. It’s not even my own biggest problem right now. Far from it. But I also understand that small shit hurts us sometimes, just as intensely as the big shit might. And that’s ok.

Acknowledging the pain is the best way that I know of to make it go away.