Paradox

Hey everyone!

I have been in a really weird mood these past few days. I really don't know what to think of it, and I don't know how it started or how to stop it. It hasn't been one particular emotion that has come through, but several, like my emotions are on hyper alert. I would be really happy, then really sad, then really angry, all within an hour's time. Great... now I'm starting to sound like I have some psychological disorder. I promise, I do not.

After the events of the last few days (and when I say "events" that sounds so ominous, and it isn't meant to be, because, honestly, nothing really out of the ordinary has happened; I have just been analyzing them more), I have really started to contemplate my life so far.

Over the past few years, I have had ups and downs, good times and bad, and made huge decisions that have affected my life forever. Some of these decisions are good (like choosing to go to college), others are bad (like betraying the trust of friends I care about most). By natural inclination, I have been dwelling a lot more on the bad.

My life is an unending paradox: good and bad dwelling together and dueling over who is to win. Most of the time, both live together and will act out decisions as equal forces, producing a result that I don't know how to deal with (and many others do not either). For example, while I may love someone with all my heart (the good living in me), how I act out that love is totally wrong (the evil living in me). I may say things I didn't mean or do things that I believe are innocent until someone comes back later and tells me how wrong I was. Many times, my innocent actions are taken way out of context and explode back in my face, only to show there was deeper, darker motives behind those good actions I thought were so great.

The paradox is that I live my life with major regrets, but at the same time I don't wish to go back to change them because those actions make me who I am. I do regret every poor choice I make; but when people ask me if I could do my life over again, would I change anything, my answer is still, "No."

It's not because I don't regret my mistakes I have made, because sometimes at night (still today) I cry myself to sleep reliving those experiences in my mind as they torture me into unconsciousness. I grieve over how much I have hurt people, and I wish for the life of me I didn't make any of those mistakes I made. But I can't erase them. They are set in stone, and only time can weather away the deep scars they left.

I have hurt people so bad they will never trust me again. Honestly, I do not expect them to; they have every right to be angry and upset and never want to speak to me again. Other people still hold grudges that go so deep I don't think they will ever get over them. I do not fight these people. They have every right to hate me and wish me dead. I will live with these ghosts for the rest of my days I am alive, eating at me and tearing me apart. Thus is my punishment for the mistakes I made. I dug my grave, now I must lie in it.

Conversely, I do not wish to change any decisions I have made because they are an integral part of me; they define who I am and I don't want to change that. While I have made huge mistakes that will forever alter my life and the lives of others, they taught me a great deal. Do I wish that I could have learned it another way? Absolutely! Sadly, how life is sometimes, you can't learn it any other way. It breaks my heart to say that, but it is true for some people; especially true for me.

I have learned so much from each of these mistakes. Not only have I learned about myself and who I am, I have also learned about how to handle difficult situations in the future. Most importantly, I have learned how other people think and interpret some of the things I do. These life lessons are so important, and I treasure them, holding them so tight that I will never forget them, no matter how hard it hurts to keep them close to me.

I live in a constant state of paradox: living with the decisions I made, thankful they taught me deep lessons, but also living in pain and agony of regret. I live with what philosophers call the Hedgehog's Dilemma: even though the hedgehog wants to get closer to another, but the closer he gets, the more he tends to hurt the other. Thus is my life. *sigh*

My one advice to any younger people reading this: Do not make life-altering mistakes, especially if you don't know you are about to make one (Wait, what?). Learn lessons the easy way. Predict the future and know what decisions are going to alter your life forever so you don't make those mistakes (Huh? How do you do that?). Don't question my logic, just do it. (This is a little sarcasm to help lighten the very dark mood I painted earlier.)

So what about you? Have you ever messed up so bad that you were ridiculed or it changed the way people looked at you? Have you ever made a mistake that ended up hurting other