I am kind of jealous of the people heading back to or starting school today. I love the start of a school year; new clothes, school supplies, and Promise.

All too frequently lately I am finding myself full of Regret, yes, with a capital R. I Regret that I was such a painfully shy recluse in college; I Regret that I didn’t take advantage of the opportunities, because I didn’t realize that that was one of the most free times of my life. I know this is fairly silly;  I am who I am because of how I lived for those 3.5 years, but still. When I’m lonely, I think that maybe I would be less lonely, had I made a bunch of friends in college.

All of these are counterfactuals, of course.

It also scares the hell out of me that The Year, the one that Richie and I proclaimed would be Important (and oh how Important it wound up being) started a decade ago. Ten years ago, I was nearing the end of one of those cliched coming of age summers. I had a crush on this guy who was 5 years older than me and probably the first guy about who I thought “Oh my god, he is SO hot.” Apparently I’ve always liked them older. He’s my friend on Facebook now. He’s married. He’s still hot. But anyway, that was all a decade ago, and I have no idea what to think of all that.

(this is the type of post that I will look at in a few days, cringe, and probably make private)

I think that what would make me happy right now, more than anything, would be to be back in NYC. But maybe, that’s borne of nostalgia. Migrating my entire livejournal over here has required more than one trip through my archives (and I’m nowhere near done) and I’m reading all about my adventures in NYC pre-graduate school. I write about how happy I am, about how I never dreamed my life could be this good.

And then there is Regret because I gave that all up and went to grad school, because I was supposed to and who the hell turns down a scholarship from University of Chicago.

Absent from the archives  (or at least, never public) are the miserable months between getting my post-grad school job and moving back to Jersey, tail between legs. Those months may have turned the city into a hostile environment for me. I don’t really know. There’s no record of them and even less memory.

 Maybe it’s the weather (it’s cool out – it’s perfect Back to School weather), maybe it’s my boredom. But I’m reading those entries, and I’m thinking of That Year and how both times I basically had to pinch myself to prove that it was real because it was so good. And because there’s no other way to say it than with a song lyrics I say “and I wonder…if anything could ever be this good again.”

Because I still wonder. Even though the habit has passed pathetic and is bordering on dangerous.