Every person I have interacted with and every event I have witnessed or participated in has merged and compounded to shape the story of my life and me as the main character. Why have some of the supporting characters passed through my life to rarely, if ever, be thought of again and some have been an aftertaste? Why do questions still linger when the answers no longer matter? Why is it no matter how my life fills, there are some gaping losses which refuse to close? It does not seem to be a function of time. Maybe it has more to do with all of the other forces impacting life at that particular time; something that leaves me stuck in that moment, spinning my wheels, treading water afraid to go under but at the same time afraid to find dry land.
My one real regret so far in life is not asking the questions I should have, could have and wanted to ask when I had the chance over 18 years ago. Approximately 18 months prior I had lost the brightest light in my life, sank into depression and had just recently emerged after making the conscious decision to live. I had carefully constructed a force field of protection so when he asked me what I thought about and what was real to me, I couldn’t answer. What was real to me did not extend beyond the confines of my own country, my own state, my own town, my own home or even my own head.
It was Friday, June 7th, 1991; he promised to write, gave me pictures and stood at the end of the driveway. I looked back to a crumpled face but not long enough to see if there were any tears. I smiled, waved, turned, looked straight ahead and walked away. I didn’t look back. I wanted him to remember me happy. If I’d have known that the following Sunday when I called to tell him about the fire at my grandparents’ house would be my last opportunity to hear his voice or communicate with him, I would have turned around, ran back, said I was sorry I hurt him, said I was sorry I did not understand, and I would have let everything inside pour out. I would have told him I really was the smart, caring, insightful, opinionated, thinking-about-real-thing girl he asked for because I was in there; I was just too afraid to come out. If I would have known that was it, I would not have wasted those few months just going out, hanging out with friends and having fun. I would have talked to him and asked all the questions swimming around in my head that I could not force my mouth open to speak.
I think if I could have asked the right questions and said the right things, everything would have been different. Our friendship could have been afforded the opportunity to have died a natural death instead of shackling me to the past like a prisoner. But maybe not. Maybe there was nothing I did and maybe there is nothing I could have done to change things but as long as he’s still out there breathing somewhere, the question remains. Words are the key to the prison gate; they cost nothing and are easily delivered but still I wait.
It occurs to me that perhaps time will show I will actually owe what could be the most important and satisfying writing project of my life to him. Without this shadow hanging over head; without this constant unanswered unrest brewing just below the surface, I don’t think I would have ever thought to undertake the project I’ve chosen to undertake. On June 25, 1991, he had been gone for approximately two weeks, I had not received a letter as promised and I was heartbroken. At the same time, Croatia had declared its independence and in a place closer to him than to me, girls just like me were suffocating in their own uncertain futures. But while I was reasonably certain I would be there for my future, they didn’t know if they would be killed or forced to become refugees. I did not know when he asked me what I thought about and why I couldn’t talk about what is real that civil war was brewing a half a world away. I did not know that people were compartmentalizing other people, labeling them one thing based on another and forcing them to a thrust-upon homeland they had never set eyes upon. Without this part of my life, maybe I wouldn’t have thought to attempt to write a historical novel about two young girls who are very much the same but very much different who, through letters, learn things about the world and themselves that impacts the rest of their lives because I don’t think I would need or want to form an answer to what I thought about world affairs outside of my narrow reality so long ago and I don’t think I’d still be searching for the right combination of words at the right the time that would finally set me free. My hope is time will prove my inability to get over something that almost certainly ceased to matter to him long ago or perhaps never mattered to him was not random insanity but the means to an important purpose I have yet to fulfill. Then it will all cease to be regret because I wouldn’t change it if it meant not being at that future moment in that condition. The end result will be worth it and it will no longer be my personal most egregious sin of sacrifice.
