On Decisions

When I was a child, I believed, with what limited knowledge of the world that I had, that my decisions would not have a lasting impact on my life.  Now that I am all grown up (going to be twenty five years very soon!), and feeling older every day, I realize just how significant certain decisions that I made in life have impacted who I am today.  I mean, none of this rings more true than my decision to NOT listen to my mother’s constant haranguing about how I need to practice piano (a characteristic I am sure MANY asian people are QUITE accustomed to).  One of my biggest regrets in my life is that I did not take my piano lessons more seriously.  Instead of spending hours upon hours soaking in ridiculously stupid cartoons (such as XMEN OR SPIDERMAN) (SCRATCH THAT DID I SAY STUPID I MEANT AWESOME!), I should have been sitting at that piano chair for hours upon hours, grinding through tedious song after tedious song…cause if nothing else, hey, maybe it would have landed me a wife by now!  (Can you say AMEN!?)  Furthermore, I drank lots of coffee, slept at all random and stupid hours, and in general just was not very careful with what I ate and now I am f’in short.  F my life.  A little chunky too.  F my life times two.

Shoulda, woulda, coulda, but didn’t.  I think I find myself thinking that a lot, to be quite frank.  History is such a funny thing, looking back at all the decisions and all the mistakes you’ve made…wishing you could take some of those, even if it were just one, of them back.  Hah, but try as I might, I find out every single day that life doesn’t work that way.  That you have to live with the decisions that you make. 

I have this scary intuition…I don’t know why.  I can just…understand situations and things in an almost supernatural way.  I wonder if maybe this curse (and sometimes a blessing) is the gift of discernment.  Sometimes I’d rather just live in bliss and oblivion.  Knowing, oftentimes, is painful…knowing…oftentimes, makes me franctic, and makes me think illogically when I’m processing different thoughts/ideas.  Knowing is one of my biggest gifts and it’s one of my biggest curses.  I’m not even going to play the false humility card here, sorry.  It’s not that I know everything, or that I’m always right.  But I know that one of the things that I have been blessed with is just my ability to comprehend and understand different things.

I remember when my ex-girlfriend (who is now married, God bless their hearts) told me that (basically) she was cheating on me.  I know technically, it wasn’t cheating.  But basically, it was.  The funny thing is, right before she even TOLD ME about it, I already knew.  She didn’t even have to open her mouth and I already knew.  And the way that I knew was soo retarded.  She had posted on her xanga site, some random gibberish about this and that, and then at the end of her xanga post, she had this one simple sentence, “I am excited about the future.”  And that was all that it took.

I knew she had someone else.  I knew that there was another guy in her life.  I never held it against that guy.  It wasn’t his fault, freak, he didn’t even know me.  And honestly, I would have probably done the same exact thing had I been in his shoes.  But unfortunately, I was the recipient, and not the distributer of the pain in that particular situation. 

Anyways, even though I knew it, hearing it…oh man.  That was something totally different.  The moment that that thought was actually confirmed, pain shot through my heart and my body in ways that I never thought imagineable.  I reacted in such a freaking crazy way…I was throwing the phone, cussing up a storm, yelling.  As a matter of fact, I went back into my room (holy crap I hope she never reads this!) and got this picture album thing that she gave me.  I was soo pissed off and angry that, although the casing was made of glass, I smashed my hand right through it, causing glass to shatter all over the ground and literally dig into my knuckles.  This was seriously straight out of a korean drama.  Blood was dripping down my hands, and although I wasn’t crying (I think I was beyond tears), I felt defeated, betrayed, and well…a little bit humiliated.  That mixed in with the fact that I lost someone that I was so close to, I knew, forever…it really hurt.  And then I found out I had cancer and my parents died in some freak car accident, and pretty much everyone I knew died in some…way…somehow.  (I bet now I’m going to get a buncha concerned comments, YOU HAVE CANCER?  Context, people!) 

I always wish I could take back that day.  Take it all back.  My reaction.  My everything.  I was so dissastisfied with the way that I reacted.  “Why did I let it get to me so much?“  I promised myself that I would never let that happen again.  But then I keep finding myself just…being human…time and time again.  So many times I wish and I desire to have the abillity to look beyond these things.  Haha.  That hasn’t always worked out so well.  It’s quite unfortunate.  Sometimes I would like to think of myself as more than human, some super principled guy who can weather any storm in stride.  Then God subtely reminds me that I am pretty weak sauce by sending more pain my way and watching me squirm in my seat.  He’s so funny.  Hahahaha.

I literally shelled up after that.  I became an emotional hard ass.  We had dated for over a year, and in literally 5-7 days I was completely over her.  It was almost as if I never knew her.  Then, I wouldn’t let too many people close to me, and even when things hurt, I forced myself to make it leave my system within a few days.  The way that I interacted with people was never the same, and more than anything, the way that I approached relationships and dating…was never the same.  I…became…so…emotionally detached in so many ways.  Guarding myself.  Protecting myself.

It really left a lasting impact.  I look back on that relationship, and I wonder “do I regret it”?  That’s such a tricky question.  You learn so much from mistakes…but the learning comes at such a high cost.  For me, it came at so much compromising, so much pain, so much jadedness…everything about me changed.  My very fiber, my very being.  And every time I think about it, part of me feels that tinge of pain, that secret chamber of regret burst open in my heart all over again…

There’s no real resolution to this post.  No real point, nothing that I was really trying to get to.  Except…I guess, all decisions in life come with consequences.  Every decision we make in life comes with regret.  It’s in the package.  When we choose, we give up something else…it’s all about cost/benefit.  But once you choose…you can’t go back.  It’s the nature of the business.  I’m not going to be eight years old sitting in front of a piano again.  I’m not going to be back to my sophomore year before I started dating my ex all over again. 

Such is life.