tbird,

When I am not having a psychotic episode, all that I can do is scatter my regrets on the floor and roll around in them. They're like thumbtacks and I feel the initial prick followed by them sinking into my skin. And that's when I start to become “regret.” That's what my depression is, more than anything else.

Right now I can say (thank goodness) that my mood is flat and numb. That I'm devoid of any strong emotions. But when this begins to change, when I begin to feel again, it will change into a sad and morose self-loathing that I can only call regret.

You can ask me any question at all and I will answer with a regret over something I did or a regret over something I didn't do.

Occasionally, the first woman that I fell in love with and I will correspond. She is still smart and witty and, to my eyes, gorgeous. She has been very happy with her husband of 30 years and she and her husband are loved deeply by their four children. I tell her frequently to remind her husband that he is the most fortunate man on earth because he's married to the cleverest and most beautiful woman that I've ever known and is father to bright and beautiful children that love him.

When I was writing her earlier today I had a sort of "slip" and wrote something akin to "and now you've grown up..." and it hit me and I continued writing, "I don't believe that I ever grew up." Because of my hypergraphia, I will sometimes "slip" in what seems to be a kind of stream-of-consciousness mode and I will only catch what I've written upon re-reading. But, in this numb mood, I've been preoccupied with that idea for hours, mulling it over, wondering if it's true. I can even feel the self-loathing creeping back and I know that it is going to hit hard. And by "it," I mean regret.

The regret of never having emotionally matured will hit and I will roll around on the tacks on the floor until I begin bleeding enough to recall the regrets of what I did and what I did not do that caused me to remain a boy as most of my friends were becoming men.

Certainly I outwardly became a man. I appeared more responsible, for instance. I worked hard so that I could be financially stable and save for the future. I treated my employees well (most of the time). I was, I think, preparing for the day that I would find a woman that I loved enough to marry and that I thought would be a wonderful mother to our children.

Even though these seemed to be rather conventional "wants" and the sentiments that I shared with others, my "desires" were anything but conventional. I continued to lead the life of an insatiable hypersexual and my reputation always preceded me so most women wanted nothing to do with me and the remaining women wanted me for the "wrong" reasons. The boy in me won out and that is just one more example of a regret.

I'm close to closing but I just want to say that I did find a woman with whom I fell deeply in love and to whom I swore fidelity. It felt like starting over. But 8 months into our marriage I came home early and found her riding my best friend in our bedroom. She was much younger than me but during the remainder of our marriage she matured but I did not.

Pile them on the floor, stick them on the wall, I will be constantly consumed by regrets. Now, that's what I am made of. It's a lie to say that I am now "consumed by regret" – I was consumed and regurgitated and formed out of the sick to become what I am today.

Everywhere, from everyone, I hear "self esteem" and I hear the most evil laugh in my gut. Does freshly flushed fecal matter feel self esteem?

When these feelings started 17-18 years ago I would play a game in which I would try to think of the worst thing that I've ever done in my life and counter it with the best. I am sure that I have done at least one good thing but, if I did, I've forgotten it. Not one single good deed.

But scores of regrets. The simplest and truest thing to say is that I regret my entire life. And that my life has become nothing but a regret.

I'll end with that. I'm not feeling quite as numb as I was earlier.

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