Regretfully Guilty

Guilt is funny emotion...it crops up at the most unexpected of times and leaves at its own sweet will, much like love...you think you have insulated yourself well because you know who you are and you know what you are doing...but if we did, why would things still surprise us? Why would our actions (which we had thought to be have been taken with sometimes rational, sometimes obligatory and sometimes whimsical beliefs) leave this extra residual called guilt too?

Someone I know is going through something similar...of all the conflicting and varied emotions D is feeling, guilt is probably the most prominent and the most painful...followed very closely by regret...I wish I could tell D that it was not entirely your fault...that life has its own course...that things would have been better, but for the immaturity and insensitivity of others...but that wouldn't help...D's at a place where everything seems so far away...you extend your hand to try and find comfort in others but no one even notices...you scream in the middle of crowded room and no one even hears a whimper...what choice do we have at that but to reach within...and within its all darkness...

Like all of us at some points in our lives, I was there at that point too...these are some of the thoughts that had crossed my mind then...and D, if there is anything I can say that might make things easier for you, it would be this…

"Is it time to let go? Of all the pain and all the love of the past...all the games, the tears, the memories, the dreams...is it time to start from the scratch? Lately, I have been feeling an acute sense of un-belongingness...is it time to stop un-belonging and just be? Just start from point zero? Talking to someone yesterday left me with a strange feeling...a feeling of being let down maybe? I don’t know...all I could feel was that maybe its time to be free and set everyone free as well...and after many many days there was this strange calm that I felt...not a very happy one but calm nonetheless...its an inevitable resignation in front of hopelessness of the situation...I guess its time to love myself now...make myself to be someone I have always wanted to be..."

This line of thought also reminds me of this quote from “The Hours” (one of my favourite movies) - "It would be wonderful to say you regretted it. It would be easy. But what does it mean? What does it mean to regret when you have no choice? "

And though it might sound like an attempt at rationalization, my guess is that that feeling is more difficult to live with...