Things for Reasons

It would seem to me that the very nature of retrospect is, in all of its profundity, to be a bitch. I mean I suppose if I were to go back in life I wouldn’t change anything, fearing the upset of my own nature, but I must admit that I would be tempted.

Take, for instance, that time with the Tic-Tac when I was nine and my little sister was five and a half: We both loved Tic-Tacs, especially orange Tic-Tacs, and every now and then my mother would give in to our pleas in the check out lane at the grocery store and buy us a container of orange Tic-Tacs. Well that night Carrie went to mom to ask for a Tic-Tac for each of us. A few minutes later she comes back and hands me this teeny tiny little piece of the Tic-Tac. The piece is so small that if it were accidentally consumed it would trigger your senses to crave an orange Tic-Tac, although you wouldn’t realize that you had in fact just the moment before swallowed a fragment of one. Anyway, so she hands me this thing, and I take the little shard from her, sneer at the fleck on my finger, stomp angrily over to the trash can and make an exaggerated point of lifting the lid off, throwing the fleck into the trash and thrusting the lid back on while exclaiming, “What am I supposed to do with that, cough on it?” Carrie looks disappointed and uncertain of how to react. My mother, sitting at the kitchen table through the whole episode, looks up from whatever it was that she was doing and demands that I “come here right now.” So I do, still angry, and she explains the situation to me. Apparently there was only one Tic-Tac left in the container, and Carrie, in all of her caring and thoughtfulness went to my mom and asked her to cut the Tic-Tac in half, to which my mother said no because it was too small and that she could just go ahead and eat it. Well this did not bode well with my sweet little sister, so she took the liberty of biting it in half to the best of her ability, to which I responded in the most ungrateful manner I had ever or have since responded to any situation. I immediately wanted the chance to do it over again, to take back my insult. How could I have possibly treated her with such utter callousness and disrespect when she was treating me with such warmth and sincerity?

The guilt I felt when my mother told me what my sister had done burned the scene so deeply into my memory that I still feel bad about it to this day. As a matter of fact, I feel the need to call her right now and tell her what a wonderful sister she is and how grateful I am to have her in my life.
Carrie doesn't remember; I, on the other hand, have never been able to forget it or forgive myself for behaving so poorly. But it was one of those pivotal moments in childhood that forms how you are as an adult, and to change how the scene played out would have ultimately changed my outcome as an individual, and I’m pretty sure I’m an ok kind of person at this point.

So yeah, retrospect. It’s made me wonder, “What if?” at least seven hundred sixty thousand fifty nine point five times. At least. But then, on the same token, I always wonder how I would be now if things hadn’t played out like they did, and I find myself feeling incredibly happy about life in general.

But this feels somehow different, and I find myself wondering “What if?” and wishing I could go back and change my course of action. I know that in essence it’s exactly the same as anything else that anyone would ask “What if?” about – it’s the same as the incident with the Tic-Tacs, the same as that time Mike and I moved to Austin and the same as that night Rachel and I were hiding from on the roof at Medima’s and the Blue Heron flew over our heads – but, regardless of it’s underlying similarity, it still feels different.

I often wonder how much sooner I would have caught it if I’d done regular checks. Would I have found it before it was invasive? What about if I’d gone ahead and gotten a scan while I was still in England? Would that have made me take action sooner when I got back to the US? Or would the English doctors have treated it as equally unimportant as the Health Department doctors? What about if I’d listened to my own damn instinct and demanded that someone help me out? Why did I tell myself to shut up and stop being silly? And why didn’t they give me the ultrasound report in the first place? That would have caught my attention and made me run to a surgeon for a biopsy. But they didn’t, and instead I took my sweet time, because why should I have been worried when they seemed so unconcerned about it?

I could “What if?” all night. I won’t, though, because that kind of speculation is frivolous now, isn’t it?

I suppose I could stomp, yell, complain, cry and be angry, too, although I think that’s hardly useful for anything, not to mention I don’t feel like it. But I’m fine – really I am. And that’s what I tell people, although they don’t seem to entirely believe me.

I’m ok, though, I think. At least for now.

But what about when I start pulling chunks of my own hair out? What about when I feel sick to my stomach for no apparent reason? What about when I just can’t do it because I’m too tired? What about when those wonderfully familiar tastes and smells turn foreign and putrid? Then what will I say when they ask, “How are you feeling?” How will I be then?

What is this going to make of me?