My. Biggest. Regret.

Just as a disclaimer, please don't expect proper grammar and punctuation in this blog post, or any other future blog posts. I'll do my best with the spelling, but everything else is up in the air. Run-on sentences, incomplete sentences, numbered lists, and bullet points are all very good friends of mine, you will meet all of them very soon.

19 Months.

That's how long it has been since my last blog post.

It's been far too long.

Sometimes life gets in the way of.....life.

I believe we left off at my Sophomore Year of High School.

My Junior Year was a year to remember.

You'll hear all about it, just.....not yet.

In due time.

But this particular blog post is going to be about something else.

If the title was any indication, it's about something we all have.

Regrets.

I've heard plenty of people say that have no regrets.

I never believed any of them.

Maybe saying you have no regrets is your defense mechanism.

Maybe saying you wouldn't go back and change anything if given the chance is a lie you've told yourself so much that, for all intents and purposes, it's the truth to you now.

Who knows.

Just my two cents.

At the end of the day I can't truly speak for anyone else.

But I can speak for myself on this.

And I'm telling you right now, I have regrets.

Many regrets.

Some big.

Some small.

And then there's one that stands above the rest.

My. Biggest. Regret. 

The moment I wish I could erase.

It was many years ago.

Probably 14 years at this point.

I used words.

That's the thing about words.

We all use them.

Every. Single. Day.

We use them when we're happy.

We use them when we're sad.

We use them when we're mellow.

We use them when we're mad.

That was a poem.

I used words to hurt someone.

I didn't say them out loud.

I typed them.

Just like I'm doing right now.

It was intentional.

It was callous.

It had vitriol.

It had malice.

And it was public.

For everyone to see.

I was angry at the time.

Doing anything while you're angry usually doesn't yield anything good.

This was no exception.

Instead of talking it out in private, I decided to make it public.

Instead of doing the right thing, I took what I felt was the easy way out.

I wrote what felt like a novel.

At the time I told myself that if I didn't specifically "name any names", then it would just be a glorified venting session.

Or some stupid rationale like that.

I wrote it.

I read it.

Three times.

I should have just taken a step back.

I should have just taken a deep breath.

I should have taken the extra ten seconds it would have taken to stop being so stubborn.

I shouldn't have sent it.

But I did.

I hurt someone.

It was wrong.

I knew it was wrong, and I didn't care.

The part of me that knew it was wrong from the beginning was overpowered by my anger.

That's a feeling I hope to never experience again.

I hurt a friend.

You're not supposed to hurt your friends.

Yet that's exactly what I did.

Words are a powerful tool.

They can cut deep.

And they are at the mercy of whoever uses them.

I used them in the worst way possible on that day.

Then I remained stubborn afterwards.

I didn't want to admit just how wrong I was from the nanosecond after I hit "publish".

It took me longer than I'd like to admit for reality to finally set in.

And then it all just hit me like a ton of bricks.

The sorrow.

The remorse.

The anger at myself.

I couldn't believe what I had done.

The things that I said.

The terrible, terrible things that I said.

I said them.

I had never been more sorry for anything I had ever done in my entire life.

When I finally mustered up the courage to apologize and ask for forgiveness, I didn't expect to receive it.

I was ready to accept that.

I tried to put myself in their shoes.

What they must have felt.

I deserved whatever was coming to me.

I could barely look them in the eye.

I couldn't even put words together.

I couldn't apologize ENOUGH.

And then.......it happened.

They forgave me.

After everything I did, and the manner in which I did it.

They forgave me.

If I could go back in time and erase it from existence, I would.

But I can't.

All I could do was ask for forgiveness.

And they forgave me.

Maybe they even forgot.

But I didn't.

I never forgot what I did.

And I never forgot that they still found it in their heart to forgive me.

I didn't think I deserved it.

I wouldn't have blamed them.

Not one bit.

But they still forgave me.

My. Biggest. Regret.

Sorry to get all somber in my return to the blogging world.

But blogs are supposed to help you get things off your chest.

A decade and a half later, and I still can't shake it sometimes.

But this.

This helps.