net regrets still zero

With the sick thrill of change comes the knowledge that certain things will never be the same. You cannot overthrow your life, go barreling headlong into newness, without sacrificing some things you may have previously taken for granted.

Exhibit A: Although Peter Pan and I have come to tender terms with our transition, his brother very pointedly left me off the list for Thanksgiving preparations this year, a fact I realized only after speaking to his mother (who, to the best of my knowledge, still has no idea we broke up).

I think we expected most everything to stay the same and, for the most part, it has. But maybe I was naïve to think I could still be a part of his family.

Exhibit B: When you kiss a man you've known for eight years and then he disappears on you, your feelings will be bruised. You will no longer know how to interact with his standard wall of silence. You will act out to counter your feelings of powerlessness. I am acting out. (Hence all the dates and distractions and my feet-first leap into the "world of men" as that little Nazi prick once sang to Liesel in The Sound of Music.)

Summary Judgment: I am not the same for all this.

You don't get to run through the sprinklers without soaking your clothes. So here I am, cold and wet. But I'm alive and aware like never before. The only trouble is, someone has closed the sliding glass door and now I can't get back into the house.

Every sign in the Universe seems to be shouting its approval from the rooftops. My choices of late have been dead on balls accurate and I hesitate to apologize for them. So I will not.

But there is a sadness to decisions, to choosing, in taking the other path as just as fair. I am learning to live with not knowing what will happen when the road bends in the undergrowth. You're not supposed to know before you get there.