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Feb 2019
I regret not knowing any better than I did when he still loved me.
I must have been inside of a wind tunnel- for months- not hearing anything.
I must have been deaf or something, I must have been too boring,
I must have been annoying.

I think I am annoying.

I regret not being as confident in myself as I was two months ago, for my
entire life.
I regret wasting away like smoked cigarettes on street corners.
I regret decaying like it is my job.

I regret that the things I have seen have not been good.
I regret that all signs in my life tell me it is falling apart.
I regret falling apart when I still had something to grab onto.

I regret not having anything to hold onto, now, and dying because of it.
I regret dying, but not because I don't like the idea of it.

I regret not living at night but rather during the day with everyone else.
I regret seeing everyone on a daily basis.
I regret my choice of boyfriends.

I regret what I used to think love is.
I regret not thinking of my parents as teenagers once.
I regret forgetting what my dad's old house looks like.

I regret coming back to the city and tying him to everything.
I regret seeing his face in red and blue and gold lights even though his is
colorless.
I regret wanting to wrap my state in my hand and close it off to newcomers-
but if I did, I'd probably crush it.

I regret wanting to travel because I will never visit the places I talk about.
I regret being a better hopeless romantic than he is, which makes me worse.
I regret being a musician because I need pain in order to do it.

I regret feeling like the main character in each of my favorite movies.
I regret thinking I am special or interesting enough to have a movie made
about me.
I regret writing a book about my life as if it isn't a story that has been heard
a million times before.

I regret believing writing a book would change my life.

I regret changing the way I believe in things. I regret making God a force
that is connected to my pain even though I swear he has nothing to do with it.
I regret thinking He should have nothing to do with me, because I use him
in my writing and possibly risk my chances at Heaven.

I regret that I gamble my relationship with the Afterlife because I think nothing could
be worse than here.
I regret thinking life on Earth is Hell, because the Earth has nothing to do with the hell humans have made it- the hell that I, a human, have made it.
I regret that I have made life on Earth a living Hell for myself.

I regret that I am so good at manufacturing existential crises out of thin air.
I regret that this air feels too thin to breathe in for more than a day.

I regret giving in when I probably shouldn't have, or thinking giving in was
the problem when in reality it is just me being too weak to deal with average,
everyday problems.
I regret that everything feels like the end of the world.
I regret seeing myself as one of the few people who will never experience
marriage because we think we'll lose parts of ourselves if we do, and we have
already sacrificed too much that if we give one more piece away, we'll de-exist.

I regret seeing myself as one or all of the few people because even when I think I am not alone in something, I swear I am truly alone.
I regret feeling alone around him.

I regret merely going through the motions again, instead of living.
I regret not feeling like I'm living, and not living because I'm not feeling like it.

I regret wanting something to change when nothing will.
I regret not knowing if I need to change or not.
I regret disappearing the more I loved.

I regret loving more to try and feel less like I have disappeared.
I regret relying on him loving me to not feel invisible.
I regret having my confidence knocked out in the first few rounds from a
punch that wasn't even all that bad.

I regret feeling in extremes, because he thinks his sister should be like me.
I regret having reasons for why she shouldn't be.

I regret not being myself in light because otherwise people will see too much
of what they don't want to see.
I regret relating to an abuser's music because it is sad enough, but if it wasn't
this sad then I probably wouldn't listen to it.

I regret needing sadness because now that I have it, I won't let it go like I
was let go- like I am let go every single time, and that is probably one of the
reasons I am like this.

I regret being like this.
I regret pretending I am not like this to preserve their innocence, or something
like that.
I regret not even knowing why I do half the things I do.

I regret regretting all of these things that mean nothing to everyone else.
I regret this poem.
Julia Betancourt
Written by
Julia Betancourt  19/New York
(19/New York)   
2.6k
   Julia Betancourt
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