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‘Someday You’ll Stop Feeling Sorry for What You Lost’
And start feeling thankful for what you had
The worst part about my hardest experiences is that I find them too painful to write about. What a waste.
Control is the most addictive drug. You’ll do anything to get it, and when it’s taken away, the withdrawal feels like it could kill you.
Maybe the best thing I ever wrote is a stream-of-consciousness prose poem for the website of a national women’s magazine. I have no idea how it got published.
The ending went: “I’m thinking to myself, if this plane crashed, / I’d go down thinking about her, / not because I love her but because maybe I could have and wouldn’t that be convenient?” It’s about a person whose name I can’t remember.
If we all experience FOMO, does that make us more isolated or more connected?
Like a rainbow, there is treasure at the bottom of my coffee cup and poetry beyond this pain.
My sister wrote me a thank-you note, unprompted. On the outside, it quoted William Arthur Ward: “Feeling gratitude without expressing it is like wrapping a present and not giving it.”
Another friend told me: “Someday you’ll stop feeling sorry for what you lost and start feeling thankful for what you had.”
