Book of Regrets
A few months ago I read the runaway best seller The Midnight Library by Matt Haig. In a nutshell, the story is about a thirtyish woman named Nora who is filled with regrets about the choices she has made in her life and swallows a handful of drugs. Instead of heaven or hell, she finds herself in a massive library, manned by a childhood librarian. The books are endless, top to bottom, infinite shelves, each one representative of life choices. Now she can pick a life and make it hers. Nora tries out variations of lives based on the choices she didn’t make. After hundreds of options, she decides her old life wasn’t so bad after all and chooses to go back, presumably to live it to the fullest. A grand lesson to learn, just in the nick of time.
I call it The Book of Regrets. (Don’t we all have those?) During this soupy, surreal, and frightening liminal space that we are living in while waiting to get back to “normal” after COVID, my own book of regrets has materialized. All the choices I did not make have returned like blinking neon lights to haunt my wanderings through a quiet house. The prevalent one is that I should have found a way to stay in school for my MFA instead of caving in to the demands of life such as work and paying my bills. At the time, I thought I would be happy with my BA. But where would my writing be now if I had continued on? Is it too late or can I attempt to go back and achieve this now-elusive dream? Coincidentally, many nights are besieged with dreams of places and people who are unfamiliar, waiting for me to make decisions I cannot seem to make. A river of words float past and I grab at them as they slip through my fingers, lost forever. Jolting awake, I feel powerless, helpless, and not a little frightened.
Fear is that corrosive rock of despair, the opposite of “that thing with feathers.” It’s a feeling of disorientation. Space shifts. Time warps. I start thinking about crazy stuff, like noumenon vs. phenomena and questioning what reality really consists of. But, thank goodness that when mundane, or earthly, life becomes unbalanced (either too mundane or not enough) we humans can turn to creativity for a sense of substance. We can create something that can endure. The artist paints, the singer sings, the musician plays, the writer writes, the crafter crafts. My husband and son are both fine guitarists and spend countless hours letting their fingers manipulate strings to bring forth notes. My sister is an inspiring crafter and creates beauty from many different materials. I write to see letters march from my brain onto the page and form meaning. It’s not easy—I can spend a day writing and rewriting a 500 word essay; my recent book tallies in multiple thousands of hours spent on the computer—but for me, essential. For every minute or hour or day spent on creating, I feel normal. I don’t question my past choices; I run with my current choice.
All else falls away. So do the regrets.
