Stop me if you think that you've heard this one before.

Everything seems easier when you look at it from the opposite side. I may be a cis-female but my whole life I've had a hard time being a woman. I find it easier to act like a man. I can be a real masshole sometimes. Like how caught up I can get in lecturing my daughter telling her to cover up her badonkadonk because otherwise she'll get dress coded. I want her to make good decisions! It's like I don't remember being young. (Spoiler, I don't remember thank you 80's) I get brought to my knees when my very own Facebook sends me pictures of myself with my girlfriends. I shudder a bit, because this is not the good fashion time, the aughts. It's no 90's. I regret that Facebook can't send me photos from the 90's. JK. That would be bad. Every "memory" my very own facebook picks just for me is just recent enough that it requires me to rush to a mirror to shake loose any remnant dullness loosened up by a reverse pinch on the iphone. I shuffle my feathers and pick out the dented ones. Oh, but how I did dress to impress, waaaaay back in my memory of being noticed, back when I promised to be less and less myself and more or less some kind of wonderful with my friends.

We looked good in that way back machine, way back on the kodachrome. Oh, younger me. I still love you. Only slightly less than I used to. You never change, always thinking about the obvious. Love and sex. Love and marriage. Love and friends. I'll take door number 3, 6 days a week. On the 7th day I will rest because, you know, God. But, of course we can talk about it, talking about friends is almost as good as having them right here, right next to you, silently being there come hell or highwater ready to hand you over to yourself IRL. It's all so much more memorable now without all the drinking. JK.

I always worried that I have not had enough girlfriends, in the cumulative, because I was sort of a guy's girl for so long. I had boy friends long before having a boyfriend. I wore one of those shy girl, let's be friends attitudes that allowed me to shoplift some friendship with boys who 'liked' me without liking them back. Never admit to the reputation of just rollin' in that for too long lest my female peers would start wondering why it never got too good or worse how it all got so awkward just before it detonated. Ciss-boom-bah! I had guy friends at work. I had guy friends who were the friends of my girl friend's boyfriends. I had male friends who were gay and guy friends who everybody thought were gay but really were just asexual and shy like me. I don't remember having real male friends in college, just a bag of dicks that got me in heaps of trouble. College was a place where we were all supposed to be having a common experience. Lakshmi, I hope that's not true.

But, the other day, one of my real friends, one of us in the here and now, my dear deep thinking friend posed a big question to our foursome over outdoor masked coffee sharing time. What do you regret? The threat of the question was laced with caffeine and lavender which are both good moods so it felt ok to stop and sink into a think with these gals. She pitched underhanded and rhetorically which is intellectually badass. She just casually stated that she would like to know what we regretted that might have changed the course of our lives. I immediately started sweating and counting secrets and lies in my head while she continued to 'go first'. Inside my comfy to do list place a thought bubble ascended with an alarm that chimed in that it was time I rush to get home because I promised to get some dirt moved, this being a Saturday morning and already over my allotted GMO (girl's morning out) time. I'd already been away for too long on chore day without a dedicated hall pass. But, I stayed. Because, that’s what a real friend would do. I watched the Inquisitor bunt her own pitch and wax poetically about how she would have really liked to have gone into acting instead of psychology, motherhood, marketing and marriage (not in that order). It was delivered with a transparency and raw confidence that we'd all have to agree was enviable. Support immediately gushed forth assuradley that, no, of course it wasn't too late to really go for it. That she possesses the exacting and disinhibition qualities you need to be an actor are undeniable, so I let awe rest in me for a moment. That was nice. I was like Sure. Yes. I can totally see that. You are extroverted, inquisitive, funny, generous and probably great (jelly) at improv based on how you so casually and spontaneously threw that perfected mega curve smack dab into a thicket of fifty-mmmmph year olds discussing the merits and folly of lavender in coffee and adult doggie diapers and you fucking owned it. Yass Queen. Dutifully, with love, we moved imperceptibly onto the friend rotation sprocket where one by one we would take turns to attempt a thoughtful response, in kind, with more shared inner personal disclosure. This phenomenon is the friendship chemistry that spins the web of intimacy that is the heart of the slogan: that is what friends are for. Mine always allow a space for the bigger thing and are never afraid to dive right in, together, holding hands in a chain so nobody drowns. It's beautiful to have such real friends.

I sat there congratulating myself for having picked these women. I chose them, we were not thrown together by circumstance. We were adults who followed the magic and said yes, I like you. I choose you in the middle of my busy adulting. I make sacrifice to keep you. I hold a space for you no matter what you do or don't do. We have ideas and dreams in common and we speak with a cultural accent of ladies who have endured things. We compliment each other, no two are alike and we know all the lyrics to too much of Casey Kasem's top 40s and aren't afraid to Karaoke it out loud at the saloon. These are my people. I love them and yet I sat quietly without speaking. I didn't want to lob something to dark or fluffy into this particular conversation for fear that I would beget a brand new regret. After my friend's regret turned aspiration through improv and theater, there were two other kind hearted caring stories of lament for relationships that went wrong. My gals got depth. The sidewalk was awash in time traveling sorrow for deeds in need of healing by a small sale of truth. I listened and empathized as best I could but 38% of me had disappeared into my regret files and 62% of me was halfway across the street heading outathere! Without a offering or even much of an excuse, I escaped to the wheelbarrow at home and commenced digging in a new internal excavation site of old suffering and unforced errors.

One day later I was ruminating on the mistakes of me. Three days in I started sterilizing and re-writing history and by the end of the week I had achieved obsession. The big R(egret)

Q(uestion) followed me around all day, mostly in the car but it lingered in the shower and cancelled a few calls. Miracles from above! I had created a whole bunch of me-time all from that mass fratch of a question. How to pick one? One regret, if you could have one do-over? This was a cobalt thorium G level threat to my innerspace. At first I thought about a pretty recent shame, the late stage aborted twin of regret. But, I can't really dream up how my life would change at the starting line of my 50's but that's probably because I'm not well practiced at being free yet. So, I reversed through the missing feelings, stopping to squint through the holes where light didn't show through. I went from a short stick of trident to microwaved bison tendons in magnitudes of descending chewability.

Why torture myself? I could easily hop on the relation ship and regret my behavoirs that attached me to Salt Lake City Utah and the upwardly ranking Mormon parents of that upwardly mobile special needs guy, the one with the crushing case of nice who took the cooking class with me just to try to steal enough courage and salt to get lucky. I regret and would re-do the incident at the Church of Latter Day Saints. After all, he was the real friend who nursed me back to myself post-thank you-India trip with a weekend long, platonic, Sex-in-the-city-marathon in PJs. No, I can't regret Utah, that's on him. I needed a friend. I can't regret India because, you know, Shiva. Shiva is the best cruel to be kind, kind of friend.

The next best obvious regret would be my marriage, not the one I have now, obviously, the first one. The starter marriage. Ok, not all of it but definitely the white wedding. Ok, yes, all of it. I regret all 18 months of that marriage then because I knew it was all one giant mistake, but I don't want to choose it as my RQ Regret. I married a friend who subconsciously put an expiration date on my purpose and while I regret lying to myself about it, it's not the worst thing that I did to someone else. It's not even in the top 10. Plus, I survived it so what would alter the course of my history there? I fantasized through a whole Benjamin Button styled lifetime movie in my head about what if I'd never gotten into that car, that night after that party, at school. I do regret that terrible night. The mystery of that memory haunts me still. That car crash is in the top ten but it's not number one. If I had anything close to total recall maybe it would be number one with a bullet, but it's all noises and blood right up to the ambulance driver handing me my finger back. But, no I don't. I do not want to remember the landmines on the road of college regret. Like less than zero, college was life imitating art. I regret that college was to my personal growth what youtube is to my intellectual growth. Like, totally, whatever. No, college is off limits for choosing ONE regret, it holds #4,5,6 and 7. The secret that I've never told anybody is too slick. The lie I don't want to admit to myself is too scary. The secret that I'm supposed to keep for somebody else that would be sedition. So where is my virtuous amends making and why is it so hard to pick? Where's my regret filled dream for better life through just one better decision? Why do my friends have a yellow brick road to lead them to the emerald city but I don't? It's almost like they'd thought about it beforehand. They probably all did. My friends are all really thoughtful. I picked great friends.

I used to think that I had a broken picker. Mostly it was attributed to men I wanted to be more than just friends with. I picked broken dudes who made for good dates on bad boats. Ships with holes for taking on water before even setting sail. Picking someone to be your real friend requires thoughtfulness and time. Often, it's a good idea to have another friend act as an inspector, a second mate, before leaving the dock. I don't want to not imply that I am not a deep thinker on my own just because I don't like to live very near the water where hard things are tangled up in the opposite of gentle thoughts about where time goes. Thinking is getting harder all the time. So, yes, confession: It took me days to find a regret I could rue and still present. The father I went back, the more something started to vibrate at me. Like the game of hot and cold potato. You're getting warmer. You're getting warmer. You're cold. You're colder. You're in Prudho Bay Alaska... wait...You're hot! You're boiling! You found me! Regret! Success! I arrived here; a big meaningful totally avoidable do over with massive ensuing consequence attached for the overall direction of my overall existence. I got sweaty and overheated for the elegy of all that time lost with this a bone fide realization that I had arrived at the answer to the big RQ. I would have picked a better friend in high school. Stop me if you think that you've heard this one before: I hooked up with a bad seed and she polluted my dirt.

Sixteen year old girls in 1983 could be forgiven for a lot of things. Being naive was definitely one of them. It was a time of tremendous recklessness, greed and false freedoms (I'm looking at all you 80's ladies). It was an epidemic of leap before you think and I was no exception. I did not approach school or social life with anything that could attest to critical thinking. Reaching back into my teenage years for memories, I seemed lonely not only because I was a rural kid but also because I was trusting, inexperienced and confused kid without any friends to show me a yellow brick road. I should've taken a moment to ask for directions myself. I really should have known better, except I didn't. I didn't know any other way but the one that opened up and swallowed me whole. And, even after the signs kept pointing out the falling rocks, I wanted (stupidly) to wait to see if there might be another sign just around the next bend that would say: all clear, naturally safe and perfectly pleasant predator free road ahead! I was beguiled by this one girl who I selected, who I picked. In the blink of one semester, she had liberated me from my parents and into the wilds of 1983 Pittsburgh, Pa. Being her friend was my mistake. I ignored the holes in her because I was infatuated with what was on the outside. It wasn't sexual, it wasn't aspirational, it was simply total. I was annihilated by a dangerous rainbow fish. I envied how little she cared about stuff like school until I didn't care either and I felt free. She wasn't forced to do or be anything, her mother was asleep by 7pm and her father 'golfed'. I don't think I ever asked about the obvious pain or alcoholism in that house because she had so thoroughly infiltrated mine. She was pretty. She was talented. She was a cheerleader. Summer vacation Rah Rah Rah!

My big realization is that my high school BFF was an outsized influence on my undersized Self. She was commanding but also preternaturally lazy and comfortable being comfortably numb. She unearthed my bad tendencies with industrial sized plough and we feasted on the rotten surplus together, like zombies. I was putting limits on my future by hitchin' up with her but I couldn't help it. I was addicted. In return for my devotion, she roasted me on a spit, over and over. She followed and swallowed everything that was mine, my path, my college, my job, my city, eventually my husband (they are married now). I look at black and white pictures and precious things from the deck of memories that holds all of the reckless behavior and I am sad for the me that stunted my self respect for some fun and a discount ride to dawntown. It was my all my fault, all that fun for nothing and kicks for free.

Teenage brains are an easy thing to waste, it's a formative time, and like, smoking and drinking when your brain is trying to ladder up synapses ~ is bad. It's my bathinkadink that cues the regret with a sad face emoji. It's like the nice lady said: "Just say no". My friend was not really a friend. She captured my flag and stole my heart only to use it as a spare, and she helped me dull my brain with compounding bad decisions that imprisoned me in a second guessing overactive mind of unimportant vaccousness. I chose poorly and my brain has paid the price. Instead of opening an intellectual me to a wider, deeper free thinking universe where all the important questions are waiting to be loved, I stranded myself on the beach. I don't feel bad for the bruising it gave my heart, I recovered. But, there's a heap of regret in that junk drawer full of old recklessness where freedom of thought might have been alphabetized and too much time was spent on nothing. Dear daughter, Look before you leap and pick your friends carefully.