One of my conditions of life is living with zero regrets. It’s an active choice, something I constantly remind myself.

Especially now, when I can’t help thinking my life would not be so shit if I hadn’t moved to Kaufman.

I don’t regret the people I met, the places I visited, the possibilities I experienced, or quitting my job.

I regret not listening to my gut. I knew that moving into that perfect apartment was too good to be true. Two Decembers ago, I googled I feel like I'm going to die soon.

Also people who feel like they're dying. It was just a feeling. I was scared, honestly. I had no idea what was going to happen, but I knew that something big was going to go down in my life. And then it did.

I didn’t die, but I almost did. I wanted to die, because the family who claimed to love and know me best created a catastrophe, then left me to clean up the mess as if I made it all by myself because I didn’t listen to them.

And that’s it, right there: Listening to my family instead of my intuition ruined my life.

That’s what I regret.

Hindsight is a cruel 20/20, because everything comes full circle when you look at past events that should have been warning signs.

My family doesn’t listen to anything I say, dismissing it all. I don’t care the reason, I just care that they do it. And I deeply resent them for it and how, despite all this time, they never listen. It fills me with an anger that I hate and want to dissipate but cannot. As much as I don’t want to, I know the most viable solution at the end of all this will be no contact. Love is not worth the stress of surrounding oneself with people who don’t care about your wants and needs, and devalue anything you say.

I always thought I was the problematic one, because I never felt the same as my family.

Now I know it’s normal to have different feelings and thoughts, and that not having those is enmeshment.

I wouldn’t have the same growth I do right now without having endured this preventable trauma, nor would I have known what was truly possible or met people that helped me become who I am today. Even the people at Vetco are a part of that.

So it’s hard, regretting like this, because I am literally who I am today because I didn’t trust my gut. Regretting that feels mournful of who I am right now, and everything good in my life since moving from Greenville, because I’m grateful for who I am.

And I’m also kind of grateful to have learned who my family truly is. I felt obligated to them, to keeping them in my life, and now I do not.

I warned them that if things turned out this way because they sought to control me, and didn’t respect and support my choices, they’d lose me. The concept burdened me then, but it doesn’t now.

Odd how that works out.

I wonder who will regret their actions now.