Still bleeding: The second half of something I wrote a year ago.

I take issue with the phrase, "live life with no regrets." My life is full of regrets and I cling tightly to them refusing to give them up, because I know that they are what keeps me from becoming content; a predicament I fear more than anything. This is the tree from a seed planted by Mrs. Remy in pre-Algebra, 1997, who warned a class full of seventh graders from ever becoming content-- something that contradicted every sermon of self-actualization preached to us by the Hug-Yourself cult.

It's 8:30am on a Saturday morning and I'm peering at my laptop out of one bloodshot eye. I'm laying on the floor (I don't have a bed yet) and I've got to leave for work soon and process financial transactions after three hours of sleep. I'm going through the delicate, painful demise of a seven year relationship, five of which were married years. And while I cannot quite explain it, I find myself in three places: (1) Happier than ever before, (2) More joyful than ever before (joy and happiness are not the same) and (3) less content than ever before.

Please understand I am not a sadist, nor am I glad that my marriage failed. If it were my choice, none of this would be happening. I would not be watching movies sitting in a lawn chair in my empty bedroom while framed photos documenting the last 7 years lean against the wall in the corner like folded-up chairs after a party. So when I say that I'm happy, do not be so simple to draw relation between this and my wife leaving on Friday the 13th of March.

Finally I have learned the difference between what we can regret and what we can't. I've got a long list of shortcomings, misgivings and screw-ups that I carry with me as a way of challenging myself to do better next time. But there's this other category of things. Things that just happened, things that are out of my hands, things that I cannot fix. These are the things that I do not, and cannot regret.

Anyone who refuses to regret certain things is robbing themselves of an opportunity for improvement. But for the other things-- the things out of our hands-- lies a rare liberating freedom to those who are willing to embrace the present bleeding pain and call it what it is: It Is.

This is: I'm sleeping on the floor, but I am getting a bed soon. I'm hung over but I am recovering. I'm broken but I am healing. I cannot block myself from the reality of the pain I'm enduring because the pain is reality, and I value reality more than I value temporary pseudo-peace. If pain is what is real at the moment, I want what is real more than I want to be shielded from suffering.

And this is why I'm happy.

Last year, March 25, 2008, I wrote, "...I felt everything. With every passing second reality exhaled, and I could feel its breath on the back of my neck. I realized that this morning I woke up not on the wrong side of the bed but in the raw consciousness of reality. It throbbed like a fresh wound, and I could not get enough of it. "