Woulda coulda shoulda

Soon I will start my new job and I did a test run today, to see how long it'd take me to get to it. Considering I live outside Mumbai city, I should have known that it would take me either long or if there wasn't too much traffic, long.

I didn't mind it too much because I had my headphones on, my book slid comfortingly from one side to the other in my bag and watching the world go by on mute does really have it's own very special charm. In times like these I find I experience a silence that has very little to do with the absence of sound. It's a stillness that feels almost unbearable and sometimes quite frightening to experience. Especially because it lets me be absent from what is happening around me and invariably is the time the mind uses to say 'Okay you're here, shall we do some cleaning today? You really mustn't put it off any longer.'

Today I thought about regret. About the countless times I've heard people say 'if I had done things differently, I wouldn't be here today.' Heck, I've said it a few times and I thought today, well what's so special about here? Am I just afraid to let my mind even imagine the way my life might have played itself out had I done the things I most wish I had?

Years ago an easy decision I didn't make could have saved somebody's life.
Years ago just a little kindness might have made a man feel less wretched.
Years ago a little self forgiveness might have saved the best friendship I've ever known and never had again.

'Tch, why look back at what you cannot change?' chides the part of me that hates these unnerving processes. But to me these regrets aren't a way of berating myself any longer. They're my way of, on some really non-human level, letting those people know I still think about them, that they alone can allow me to visit those parts of myself that I can't stand to consider for more than a few minutes at a time. It's my way of letting them know I am becoming the person they had needed me to be all those times.