5. Regret

Regret

(At the beginning of November, I selected one word for each of the first ten days of the month for NaNoWriMo. I did not think about what day each date was, I did not consider that day 5 of November was Election Day. So the fact that “regret” is the word for Election Day? What did my unconscious know that my consciousness didn’t? Was some MAGA-Trump mind sending out signals? Or was this just the sort of coincidence that mathematicians say happens all the time? I’ll go with the latter. Just to add, I did not write this on Day 5. I didn’t write it until Day 11. I will try to catch up over the next few days.)

            Regret replays actions, or more often inactions, hoping in vain for a different result. Regret saps strength, it keeps me awake at night. It keeps the focus on the past, what wasn’t done, what should have been done, what should have been done differently. It distracts from the future, what can still be done.

            Why didn’t I say that? Why did I say this? Should I have gone to Pennsylvania to canvas voters? Should I have written more postcards? How many more of us should have canvassed, sent postcards, made phone calls? Would all of us have made the difference?

            But it didn’t happen. We didn’t do the things we now regret not having done. What if we had done them and he still had won? I would not have felt regret then, I would have felt more entitled to feel anger at the people who didn’t vote.

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It’s NaNoWriMo Day 5. I will be writing about feelings, because that is what I have the hardest time articulating. One feeling a day.