((Disclaimer: I never really thought I would answer one of these questions, but this one made me think quite a bit, so I suppose it's only fair to record the answer . . . ))
If you could go back in time and undo one mistake from your past, what mistake would you undo?Submitted by Los Angeles Style Salope.
This question is really about regrets, and for the most part, I choose not to indulge regrets. Things I did that I would not do now, choices I would not make again, decisions I would reconsider . . . all those things and the consequences of them are a large part of why I can sit here and say stuff like "things I did that I would not do now" and so on.
As a result, I generally don't have much to do with thinking "if only I could go back there with the knowledge I have now". After all, if the knowledge I have now is so valuable (and it mostly is), I'm okay with whatever I had to do to get it.
There is one exception. In 1978, I met someone who said to me within the first hour or so of our acquaintance, "I and X person over there are really going to hurt you. We are going to be manipulative, passive-aggressive, and dishonest in ways you cannot imagine. I don't think you understand just what we are going to be able to do, and it's going to hurt a lot." Seriously. That's pretty much a direct quote. I was struck by the certainty, so I wrote it down in my journal. I also didn't believe one single word of it.
I should have.
There are times when it's not a good idea to accept someone at their own valuation, but this was not one of them. Realistically, who describes themselves this way who is not, at base, the person she is describing? The thing I did not know, that I wish I had known, was that regardless of all the havoc she was willing to wreak in other people's lives, she valued her view of herself as an honest person, so she told the truth about who she was.
Nine years later, when I was standing in the detritus of a relationship, and sucking up more emotional pain than I had understood was possible, I said, as so many people do in such situations, "How could you do this to another person?"
She said, "But I warned you! I told you exactly who I am." These words reminded me that I had written down something she'd said at the beginning, so I went and dug out that old journal. And sure enough, she had warned me.
I wish I'd listened and believed. It's the closest I ever got to real evil, and it's a lot closer than I wish I had gotten.
The most interesting thing about this is I am not at all convinced it matters what I might have done differently. What I wish I could undo was the failure to believe what I was told.
