Regret Me

A glimpse, by definition, is a partial view based on sliding door moments. Moments that are seemingly inconsequential everyday things that make or break the most pivotal relationships in life.

A moment like my rekindling with Lizzie.

Like when I flew across the country to help her. Like when she proposed or when we had our first date, when we kissed again or when she found out she was pregnant. If I had stopped Lizzie that day when she walked past the coffee shop on my first day of New York, maybe all of this would've happened.

Instead, I kept my head down and told myself I couldn't go back there. I let her go.

This was my sliding door moment.

This life I had imagined with Elizabeth Olsen was simply nothing more than a glimpse. A glimpse that presented itself in the last seconds of my life. A life full of happiness, love and care. Although it was only a short fling I had with Lizzie when we were in university; everything that made her burn, made me burn. Everything I loved about the world, she loved about it. Everything I struggled with, she struggled with. We were two halves in that way you almost never find with anyone but at the same time, in the year we spent loving each other, we were a mess, two natural disasters who needed to heal and I know we wouldn't have done that had we got back together.

So, when I moved to New York, I didn't call her like you all thought I did, I didn't text her, I actually never saw her again.

I started going to therapy and did some actual self-reflection for the first time in my life and ... it wasn't easy. It took years but I did it. I won back the life I always wanted, and I won back Vanessa. Plus, I got to right some wrongs. I had the most amazing daughters and a beautiful life in the suburbs of New Jersey. I never missed a school play, football game or ballet concert. I became the mother I had always wanted to be.

But I was still sick. It wasn't until I really started dying that I truly thought about my life as a whole picture. I loved Vanessa so hard, but she was never my heart. She knew it and I knew it but the place my heart belonged was too dangerous. Lizzie was a path I could never walk again. Everyone was there for me when it came to the end. Everyone apart from Elizabeth, of course, because she had no idea where in the world I was. We hadn't spoken since we were 20 years old and God it feels like a lifetime ago.

I had loved Lizzie for 30 odd years, but I never had the chance to tell her and now I never will.

So, in my final seconds on this earth, when I closed my eyes, I saw a glimpse of the life I could've had. I saw a life with Lizzie. A life of ups and downs, love and loss but most of all, all I was left with was the deep feeling of regret.

Regret is an underused word, in my opinion. In the end, we regret the chances we didn't take and the decisions we waited too long to make.

So go ahead and regret me, but I'm beating you to it, Liz.

THE END

_